


Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

by Square Pudding (Square_Pudding)



Series: Demolition Lovers [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: A surprisingly high body count, Action Hero Stuff, Alcohol, Any excuse to put Reno in haute couture, Deepthroating, Fake Marriage, Fellas is it gay to catch feels for the guy you wanna do a sex with, Happy Ending, Heist, Love Confessions, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, PIV Sex, Rating will go up, Sex while injured, Spies & Secret Agents, Tango, That's where they know they're hot for each other but they're having an argument, Trans Male Character, Turkfic, Undercover as a Couple, Wet Dream, mutual rescuing, reverse gay chicken, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:33:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24856150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Square_Pudding/pseuds/Square%20Pudding
Summary: Reno and Rude go undercover as a rich married couple. You know where that leads.
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)
Series: Demolition Lovers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798939
Comments: 52
Kudos: 127





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A heads-up for things that didn't fit neatly in the tags section:
> 
> -Reno's trans masc in a world where being trans is no big thing because it's a fic and that's how I wanted it, but he does get creeped on a bit.  
> -For most of this story, Reno assumes a non-binary persona whom other characters refer to with they/them pronouns. Reno-as-himself is always referred to as he/him.  
> -There is no rape or assault in this story, however this does follow the same continuity as my last fic [How to Assassinate Someone for Fun and Profit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24143089/chapters/58132069), and there is a brief passage alluding to past assault.  
> -Lastly, this fic uses the Last Order production notes names for the BC Turks. For reference:
> 
> Emma = Gun (Female)  
> Alvis = Rod (Male)  
> Freyra = Shotgun (Female)  
> Maur = Martial Arts (Male)  
> Ruluf = Two Guns (Male)
> 
> Thanks to Shannon and Doxy for feedback!

# -1641 (Wednesday)

It rained that day.

How long had it been since he’d seen rain? The real stuff, not the sheets of filthy uppercity runoff that came down between the plates every time it stormed, or the chemically-treated disinfectant sprays that drizzled down onto the slums once a fortnight. Real, wide-open-sky rain, the judgment of the gods cast down upon the small pathetic creatures crawling in the dirt.

He had felt cold for a while, but even that was gone now. When the droplets hit his eyelashes, he didn’t even blink. Dark shapes that may have been roiling storm clouds or the milling silhouettes of curious scavengers drifted across the snot-smear of his vision.

A silvery wisp of thought surfaced: _At least I get to die outside_.

A few hours ago -- days? weeks? -- even that would’ve seemed like too much to ask for. There’d been men with guns. Dogs. Bloated cloven-hoofed things with eyes that flashed in the dark like a cat’s, rows and rows of yellow, rotted fangs sinking into the soft parts of his arm. 

Sewage water gurgling over purple, mangled flesh. The ripe scent of fermented shit still clung to his nostrils. He was going to get an infection. Would he have to beg off of work tomorrow? Andrea was going to be so pissed...

A darker shape swam into view, blotting out the left side of his vision. Heavy patter of raindrops on vinyl. An umbrella. Not for him. Someone was bending over for a closer look, expensive wool suit, long black hair frizzing from the humidity.

He was reminded, suddenly, of his own nakedness. The dress he’d been wearing had been torn to shreds during his run through the sewers, ripped at by rapacious hands and claws, snagged in brambles of twisted, rusted metal. All his goods out on display. _People usually pay good money to see these, y’know. But you’re special, Mister. I’ll let you look as long as you like._

“Yes,” said the dark-haired man. Not to him, to some gray brick phone held to his ear. “Please send a medevac to the edge of Sector Six. Past where the plate ends. And let the director know I’ve picked up something interesting.”

* * *

# -3 (Wednesday)

 _Fuck,_ Reno thought as the elevator hummed to a halt on the 56th floor. _I need a vacation._

Just 71.5 hours to go, not that he was counting. Three days until soft white beaches, ski jets, and drunken orgies. He could put up with nearly anything as long as that was on the horizon.

Midgar’s infamously hostile summer weather spared no one, not even those dwelling in the cushy upper-level floors of the Shinra Building. The delicate flowers in upper management simply wilted without their AC, which meant that the system shorted two to three times a week, as executive fuel-hogs competed with R&D over the building’s dedicated electrical grid. This left innocent, unsuspecting departments like, oh, say, General Affairs, and its innocuously-named Investigative Division, feeling like the inside of Ifrit’s armpit. Maintenance kept running box fans and swamp coolers around to ease the suffering, but all it did was make the place sweatier.

In light of that, Reno thought he was putting in a good effort, wearing as much of the Turks uniform as he was today: no tie, no jacket, no belt; shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and all but two of the buttons undone. If the office ladies wanted to stare at his chest and blush, well, that was all they ever did anyway.

“Sennnnpai!”

Reno braced for impact as he left the elevator. Freyra, one of the department’s recent hires, was bounding over to him, looking like nothing so much as an excited puppy in a necktie. As she reached him, she began to pull off a salute and narrowly held herself back.

“Hey, rookie,” said Reno, without energy but not with any particular antipathy either. On paper everything about Freyra should’ve annoyed him -- rich family, cutesy personality, a competitive streak that put his own to shame -- but in practice he just found it hard to dislike her. Maybe it was all the murder. “What’s shaking?”

Freyra fell into step beside him. “Tseng just gave me my first big solo op!” she enthused.

“Yeah? Good work.” Reno could tell without looking over that she was beaming at this little off-handed bit of praise. “Where they sendin’ ya, Wutai?”

The jab flew right over Freyra’s head. “Oh, I wish!” she said, with a painful amount of earnestness. “It’s just over to the Corel region. Goods retrieval.” 

In Turk parlance, that could mean anything from intercepting a shipment to kidnapping. For her first time in the pilot’s seat, it was probably the former. A nice easy milk run for a baby agent, not that he would tell _her_ that.

Freyra darted a few steps ahead and spun around, walking backwards to face him as they talked. She was sporting a new lapel pin he hadn’t seen before, the emblem of some regional hunting association he supposed she’d been part of back in Mideel. It was her one modification to the standard uniform, which she was somehow wearing completely buttoned up and neatly pressed despite the office’s sauna conditions. “They’re giving me a full security team,” she boasted. “Even support staff!”

“Nice.” That should help keep her out of trouble.

“I’m thinking of requisitioning something with more stopping power from the arsenal. Ooh! What do you think about sniper rifles?”

Reno shrugged. Realistically, to answer that question he’d have to know the details of her assignment, and Freyra wasn’t so green she’d spill that kind of information in a department hallway.

“Why not,” he said finally. The junior agents always exhausted him like this. “Hell, see if you can’t finagle Advanced Weapons into letting you take a few prototypes along while you’re at it.”

Freyra furrowed her neatly-maintained brow. Not even a hint of perspiration. Amazing. Maybe she had sealed all her pores shut or something. “You really think they’d let me...?” 

_For fuck’s sake_. “Freyra, you’re a Turk. If you want a fancy toy, tell ‘em you want a fancy toy.”

She continued to look unconvinced. “And I just fill out the requisition form like normal?”

“Nah, it’s an interdepartmental request… thing. They’ll have it at the desk. Look, it’s field-testing. Scarlet’ll _want_ you to have it.”

They reached the edge of the bullpen and he turned to wave her off. If he went in with a rookie hovering like this, the others would get the same idea and all start mobbing him at once. “Go on, go find yourself a nice rail gun or something,” he said. “I gotta check in with the big guy.”

At this, the spring returned to Freyra’s step and she bounced in place for a moment, a _knowing_ quality to her look that Reno decidedly didn’t like. “All right, senpai,” she said, giving him one final glance before she disappeared down the hallway from which they had come.

“Sheesh…” Reno lifted a hand to run a few fingers through his hair, stopped, thought better of it. He was enough of a soggy trainwreck without messing up the small bit of product that hadn’t yet melted out of his hair. Reno stuck the hand in a pocket instead and resumed slouching in the direction of his desk.

The bullpen was a recent renovation, the result of the department’s hiring surge coming into sudden and violent conflict with Shinra Company’s tone-deaf corporate culture, which insisted open offices _‘promoted collaboration’_ and _‘cut down on employee idleness.’_ Reno missed the illusion of privacy afforded by his old office -- not to mention his old couch; they’d had some good times together -- but the upshot was this place had real fucking windows and it didn’t get nearly as stuffy. Most times of the year, anyway.

Reno dropped into his chair with a dramatic exhale, putting his boots up on the corner of a low filing cabinet. After a moment, he craned his neck to get a glimpse of the shiny head on the other side of the computer monitor.

“Mornin’.”

“Hm,” Rude answered, without looking up. He was typing, the glow off his screen dancing over bare, glistening forearms. Even he wasn’t managing the full uniform in this heat.

“Whatcha got there?”

“AAR from the Sector Five op.” Rude hit the return key a couple times, each stroke spaced out like its own punctuation. “Already filed yours.”

Reno started. “You didn’t hafta do that,” he protested, dropping his feet down onto the tile again. “I was gonna get to it today.”

Rude shrugged and kept typing. Compared with when they first became partners, Reno was pretty reliable about doing his own paperwork these days, provided no one asked too much of him (like that it would be on time, or properly formatted, or spellchecked). If Rude was taking over, it was usually because he couldn’t trust Reno to time-manage, or he was just being weirdly passive-aggressive about something.

Rude in a bad mood was going to make this shitty day so much worse. “C’mon, partner,” Reno said. “Lemme finish yours, then we’ll be squared up.”

“Almost done,” Rude said, by way of shooting down that proposal.

Reno slouched back miserably. Maybe it was fine, maybe Rude was just being anal about the state of their inbox. Nothing to worry about.

He checked the time: 9:18am. Reno sank further into his chair and ~~pouted~~ scowled at the ceiling, pulling at his shirt to fan himself.

In the gap between their monitors and the desk, Rude could probably get a good glimpse of his partner’s chest as Reno fanned himself; smooth pale skin, a periodic flash of nipple. He grinned to himself when he heard a hitch in Rude’s typing. But it only lasted for a moment before the patter of keys resumed, and without so much as an awkward throat-clearing.

Reno let out another sigh and dropped his hand.

He didn’t know what he expected. More than two years as partners, and not once had Rude taken any initiative in this weird mating ritual thing of theirs. Sure, they’d fooled around a little -- a drunken blowjob here or there, a bit of adrenaline-charged necking in the back of a helicopter -- but every Monday morning Rude was back to business as usual, collar starched, tie on straight, like none of it had ever happened.

It wasn’t like Reno needed a lover. Turks worked better without attachments; he’d seen enough of Rude’s relationships fail to drive that lesson home. But it’d be nice to occasionally get some confirmation that they were actually mutually into each other, rather than one of them just being along for the ride.

Was it the tits? _Reno_ thought he looked better this way -- lighter, streamlined -- but at the end of the day Rude was probably like any other hot-blooded male and lost interest as soon as the fun bags went away. Which sucked, but if Rude couldn’t see the appeal in Reno’s new-and-improved body, that was his problem.

Still…

Absently, Reno rubbed at his jaw, the little rough spot of bone that jutted out just a hair too far. His thoughts wandered to that bit of extra skin near his elbow he just couldn’t seem to get rid of; the knobby way his ribs stood out against his chest; his too-thin lips. If he took care of those too, maybe--

“Yo, what about those expense reports?” he asked, deciding that was one deep well of insecurity he couldn’t risk falling into today.

“Finished,” said Rude.

“Timesheets?”

“Already with payroll,” said Rude.

“The TI-138s?” That was the ‘lost and damaged equipment’ form, a favorite around the Turks bullpen. Reno didn’t break as many of his special-issue truncheons as he used to, but the damned things still snapped like twigs when you beat dickbags over the head with them.

“Filed.”

Reno scrounged around the bottom of the mental barrel he reserved for office bullshit. “The… affidavit for that one lawsuit thing?” he asked. Turks were mostly indemnified from charges brought by the shambling corpse of Midgar’s old legal system, but every now and then some rich asshole tried to bring a civil suit.

“‘Wrongful death’ case,” Rude confirmed. “Signed and submitted.”

It occurred to Reno, much later than it should have, just what Rude was doing. He stood up.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re trying to clear my slate before next week, aren’t you?”

On the other side of their pushed-together desks, Rude finally stopped typing and leaned back in his chair, adjusting his sunglasses.

“Don’t know what you mean,” he said, with a poker face that was good but not perfect.

“Damn it, Rude!” This was worse than his partner going all pass-agg and weird on him; he was being _nice_ again. “I said I was gonna get to it!”

“Just thought I’d take care of the small stuff for you,” Rude said. “Nothing too important.”

“You forged my fucking signature!” Never mind that they had both been doing that for each other for years now, and for far more important things than court filings. Bar tabs, for instance. “I got _some_ pride, yanno; how d’you think it makes me feel, having a partner who runs around acting like my secretary all the time?”

“It’s not ‘all the time’--”

_(“Ask him.”_

_“No, you ask him! He’ll kill me!”)_

“Give me your report on the Ancient girl,” Reno insisted. “I’m gonna finish it.”

_(“It was your question, not mine.”_

_“He likes you better!”_

_“Not_ that _much.”)_

Rude looked helplessly at his computer screen. “It’s only got two lines left.”

“Then fucking gimme your share of the kids’ performance evals too!”

_(“You’re all being ridiculous. Look, I’ll ask him.”_

_“Emma, wait, no!”)_

“Excuse me, senpai,” a crisp voice spoke up. “I had a question on behalf of one of my colleagues.”

Reno looked around. Then down. Emma was standing uncomfortably close to his shoulder, arms folded behind her, weight balanced evenly on her sensible shoes. Like Freyra, she didn’t appear at all affected by the heat of the bullpen, although she’d switched her regulation slacks out for the still-technically-regulation but rarely-seen pencil skirt.

“Uh,” Reno managed. “What’s up, sis?”

“Some of the… boys were curious about your service history,” Emma said, the only hint to her disdain coming through in a slight pause and a narrowing of her eyes. Behind her, Reno spotted a small huddle of her fellow rookies, looking like sheepish raccoons caught raiding the pantry. “As you know, I am a graduate of the Shinra Military School; Mister Maur is a former detective; Rude-senpai was a professional boxer…”

 _And_ former masked wrestler, although Reno didn’t volunteer that piece of trivia. Rude wouldn’t have appreciated it.

“...so some of us wished to know what you did prior to swearing with the Turks, Reno-senpai, sir.”

Reno made the kind of face usually reserved for a mouthful of sour milk. He knew exactly which one of the junior agents had been making inquiries into _that_. Behind Emma, he caught sight of Ruluf’s asymmetrical dark hair as he started beating a hasty retreat back to his own desk.

“Yeah, word of advice, don’t ask that kinda question around here,” Reno said, loud enough to ensure Ruluf heard, along with the rest of the bullpen. “You’re Turks now, get it? Doesn’t matter what any of us did before.”

Even Emma seemed unhappy with that answer, little encyclopedia that she was. Everything she’d just mentioned was technically classified information, the company having done its best to scrub all public records of an agent’s existence once they swore up. It wasn’t always possible to completely erase a Turk’s past -- Rude was a good example there, although given a few years even he would fade from Wall Market’s collective memory -- but it was gauche as fuck to ask about if you weren’t at least three drinks in or short a couple pints of blood.

“My apologies, senpai,” Emma said curtly. “I meant no offense.”

“I bet,” Reno said, with only a little venom.

She delivered a razor-sharp military salute of the type Freyra had narrowly refrained from earlier. “I’ll leave you to your work, sir.”

Reno clicked his tongue as she departed. He watched as she headed straight back to the remaining couple of Turks who hadn’t had the presence of mind to flee when Ruluf did -- one of them was Alvis, the dumbshit redhead who absolutely did not look a thing like Reno -- and corralled them back toward their desks, her voice low and reproving.

“Kids these days,” Reno muttered, dropping back into his chair. 

Beside him, Rude grunted in agreement.

“I keep tellin’ ‘em to cut it out with the _‘senpai’_ shit. We never did that.” It would’ve been weirder if they had, given how their partnership had started off. But also Reno would swear all these Wutaian words hadn’t been so popular before the ceasefire.

“You love it. Admit it,” Rude said, with a trace of fondness anyone else would’ve missed.

Reno felt a stubborn warmth spreading across his cheeks and huffed. “Shut up.”

At the other end of the bullpen, the door to Tseng’s office opened. The deputy director stuck his head out, glossy black hair drawn back in that severe ponytail he was sporting these days.

“Rude. Reno,” he said. “Conference room.”

* * *

The conference room had the benefit of being fractionally colder than the bullpen, which was nice. With the blinds drawn and the lights dim, it made a pretty good napping spot during slow days, not that there were many of those lately.

When Rude and Reno arrived, Tseng was already there, pacing in front of the blank white board at the far end of the room. And he wasn’t alone.

“Uh. Sir,” Reno said, inclining his head toward Director Veld. Hierarchical bullshit had never come naturally to Reno, but he’d had a few years to learn to appreciate just how much power the director exerted within the company.

At the moment, however, Veld was hanging out near the back wall, arms folded, his already deeply-lined face creased with concern. He didn’t react when Reno addressed him.

“Take a seat,” Tseng said.

That nudged Veld out of his statue impersonation. “Lock the door first,” he rumbled.

Rude complied, then dropped into the stiff faux-leather chair next to Reno’s.

“First order of business,” said Tseng, halting his pacing finally to step forward, both hands braced on the edge of the conference table. “Reno, your PTO has been canceled.”

Reno sputtered. “The hell? You can’t do that. You already approved it.”

“And the director has reverted my approval.”

“What the fuck!”

“Reno,” Tseng cautioned.

“What the fuck, _sir!_ ” Beneath the table, Reno felt the toe of Rude’s boot touch the side of his foot, a quiet little warning he had no intention of heeding. “You guys are always telling me to take some R&R. I’ve been planning this shit for six months, got the hotel booked and everything.”

“Don’t misunderstand. You’ll still be going to del Sol next week.” Tseng tipped his head. “Think of it as a ‘working vacation.’”

“How about I don’t think of it like that and you let me go on my R&R in peace?”

Veld abruptly detached himself from the far wall, drawing focus with a single clearing of his throat. “We’re in need of two experienced agents for this operation. It’s too complex to send a rookie.”

“If it’s that big a deal, why not send the old guy?” Of the senior Turks still on the employment roster, the so-called ‘Legend’ was the only one not currently hospitalized or MIA. Plus, he already lived in del Sol, which should make him a gimme.

“He’s refused reactivation,” said Veld, like this was a normal-ass thing a Turk could just go and do. “Furthermore, I don’t believe he possesses the… specific skills necessary for the operation.” He reached Tseng beside the desk and half turned, deferring to him again.

Tseng dutifully picked up where the director left off. “We’ve received intel on a probable Ancient artifact that will be passing through Costa del Sol in eight days’ time. As you’re aware, the president has a vested interest in collecting materials related to the Ancients.”

“So just march some guys in and seize it,” said Reno. “What’s the big deal?” Costa del Sol was technically an independent province, but nobody that did business with Shinra Company was really independent anymore.

“For a variety of reasons, forceful procurement is not on the table for this one. It’s a politically delicate situation; several of the players have the private financial resources to, if not mount a serious threat, at least rattle sabers in a way the company would find inconvenient at this moment in time.”

In other words, with Shinra Company in peace-and-love mode following the treaty with Wutai, it couldn’t afford to be caught bullying some small-time billionaire over a museum piece. So the Investigative Division was getting called in for _‘plausible deniability.’_

Reno let out a low groan as he slouched back in his chair.

“Sirs,” Rude said beside him. “Why two agents?”

“That comes down to the nature of the infiltration,” said Veld. “Our understanding is that the artifact will be changing hands at a private auction held next Wednesday at the Soluna Grand Hotel. We’ve managed to intercept an invite, but it’s addressed to two individuals.”

Reno snorted. “So what, you’re sending us undercover as a married couple?”

This was a bit of a running gag in the department. Reno had proposed it at virtually every mission briefing since he and Rude had been paired up more than two years ago, mainly just to see the kind of reaction he could get out of his partner -- and once Rude had gotten used to it, the exasperation he could wring out of Tseng.

Like right now. “For the last time, Reno--”

“No,” Veld interrupted. He stroked a hand over his chin. “That might actually work in this case.”

“Sir,” Tseng protested. “Please don’t humor him.”

“I don’t believe I’m known for my sense of humor, Tseng.”

Reno found that his mouth had fallen open and clicked it shut. He blinked. The air in the room suddenly felt several degrees hotter than the bullpen.

“Uh… I was just…” he fumbled. He was aware of Rude going very, very still beside him, and considering how he held himself usually, it was like seeing a person freeze down to the molecular level. “I didn’t mean…”

“The invitation is addressed to a ‘Ceci Magdalene Toast and member of their household,’” Veld continued, ignoring the wave of visceral discomfort coming off his agents. “The Toasts are an excluded branch of the Shinra family, which we assume is why they received the invitation: Ceci would have reasons to buy the artifact which extend beyond a simple collector’s interest.”

Rude asked the obvious question, probably sensing that Reno’s brain and mouth weren’t on speaking terms just then: “Why not just sell it to the president directly?” 

“Personal dislike for the company, perhaps, but most likely the seller believes the right private buyers would be able to outbid whatever the president might offer.”

That made _no_ sense for a company with more money than the gods, but fine. Maybe the guy really did just hate Shinra Company that much. So if they couldn’t obtain the artifact legitimately, and storming in and stealing it was out of the question, that left… more Turklike solutions.

“So you want me to go as some fancy rich bitch,” Reno concluded, “buy the Ancient rock, and bring Rude along as my husband.”

“Doesn’t have to be husband,” Tseng said, with a ghost of a smirk he would deny ever existed. “We could say he’s your boyfriend, paramour, fiance…”

“Adoptive brother. Fraternal twin,” Veld proposed, like he was extending an olive branch. “I leave the details to your discretion. The Toasts are not themselves regular participants in the art world and no one attending the auction will know what Ceci looks like, nor have any idea about their personal affairs. Furthermore, because the Toasts are an excluded branch family, no one will assume you are acting on the president’s behalf. If anything, it will be presumed everyone at the auction is in one way or another his political opponent.”

Tseng said, “You’re also permitted to secure the artifact by other means, if you can do so without casting suspicion on the company. Afterward, the artifact will be passed onto our naval forces who will arrange for the rest of its transport. We anticipate you’ll be in the field no more than five days. Factor in three days of prep time here in Midgar, and another day for cleanup, and you’ll be back at your desk hardly any later than you would have anyway.” This time he did let the smile show plainly, just the meanest little upward curl of his lips as he savored the look on Reno’s face.

Reno rocked back in the uncomfortable conference chair and seethed at the ceiling. More than Tseng, more than Veld, the thing he resented most about this situation was his own fucking brain. He was already seeing how it all fit together, the little moving parts, how to turn this pitch into an actual, functional plan.

“I got two questions,” he said finally.

“Very well,” Veld allowed.

“One: what’s the spending limit for this thing?”

There was a brief pause, as Tseng backed off from the conference table and exchanged a pregnant look with the director. Then he said, “The president has authorized considerable funds toward the artifact’s acquisition.”

That was management-speak for _‘we don’t care, as long as you don’t invoice something you can’t justify.’_ And there was always a way to justify it. Reno nodded.

“Question two,” he said. “How do you guys feel about outside consultants?”

* * *

# -2 (Thursday)

“I never imagined I would hear from you again,” said Andrea Rhodea as he watched from an appreciative distance, knuckles tracing his jawline. “You’re lucky that I had a last-minute cancellation today, or I might have missed your call. I don’t often accept invitations from Shinra, you know.”

“You’re pretty happy to take money from its employees,” said Reno. Then he clenched his teeth as the tailor lifted and repositioned his arm without warning again, little white tape measure going everywhere. If Reno felt lucky about anything, it was that he’d remembered to shave that morning. “Whatcha got now, like five clubs?”

“Four. I sold the Good Luck to a dear friend of mine. Hated to part with it, but the Honeybee Inn really is taking up so much of my time these days.” Andrea’s dark eyes narrowed as they scanned up and down Reno’s body. “That was one of your old haunts, if I remember correctly.”

Ugh. The sense-memory of stale beer and sticky floors came back to Reno. He’d been a top earner there for three months in a row, before he’d smashed a glass in a customer’s face and even Andrea couldn’t persuade the manager to keep him.

Come to think of it, that was how he’d gotten onto Chocobo Sam’s radar too. Reno could still recall the bristly red-lipped smile as Sam told him that Don Corneo _‘likes girls who bite.’_

“Are you cold, sweetheart?” the tailor asked near his shoulder, seeing the goosebumps going up along his skin.

“No, but if you call me that again I’m gonna jam that little pencil straight into your eye,” Reno snapped. “Why don’t you shut up and quit sticking that thing in my pits?”

Andrea chuckled, a deep, silken sound like chocolate or whiskey or whatever food his legions of admirers liked to compare it to. “Remind me what I should be calling you these days?”

“It’s Reno now.”

“‘Reno,’” Andrea repeated, like he was appreciating something rare and delicate on his tongue. “What a luxurious name. It fits you. I think an asymmetrical look,” he added to the hair stylist setting up near the vanity mirrors. Veld had agreed to let Reno commandeer the (gloriously air-conditioned) green room the executives sometimes used before TV appearances, on the promise that Scarlet never found out about it. “Perhaps a loose perm, something with volume. Effortless, beachy, chic.”

Well, that sucked. Reno might’ve expected Andrea to say no to his usual gelled look, but dammit, he looked _small_ with his hair down. Rude was just gonna tower over him now.

“What about the red?” the stylist asked, mirroring Andrea’s squint but with far less subtlety.

“We’re not changing the color,” Reno said at once.

Andrea tipped his hand, conceding. “We’ll keep the red. However, let’s touch it up before we do any styling. I’d never forgive myself if ‘Ceci Magdalene Toast’ appeared at a Costa del Sol social event with dark roots.”

The joke there was, well, who knew what Ceci Magdalene Toast would do in any situation, social or otherwise? There had been precious little in the Toasts’ dossier: well-off, reclusive, on the outs with the main Shinra family since several generations before the president’s rise to power. They didn’t do public events or charity, and though they kept a decently-sized estate in Sector 3 they normally lived out of a large country mansion near Kalm, the type rich people obnoxiously referred to as a _‘cozy little cottage’_ despite having two stables and a full-time kitchen staff.

Of Ceci themself, there was even less information. Late 20s, heir to whatever constituted the Toast family fortune, a bit of a painter, and a hobby-breeder of Mideel dwarf chocobos -- which were about the size of a small dog and had long, luxuriant feathers, like shih tzus with beaks. The only photo of Ceci included in the file was of a pudgy three-year-old in a long, genderless white shift and thick blond curls. Reno had accidentally imagined newly-minted VP Rufus Shinra in the getup and had needed to leave the bullpen for some air because the laughter was making him dizzy.

Back in the present, Reno jumped; the tailor had moved on from measuring his arms to his chest, the long slender measuring tape skittering ticklishly down his ribs. Reno bent an arm to grab the man by his shitty fake hair piece and narrowly restrained himself.

Andrea saw it, of course. He hummed to himself, stroking his bottom lip with the corner of his thumb as he circled Reno on the little raised platform.

“So much work you’ve put into yourself these last few years. Beautiful,” he said, and despite himself Reno did feel a small tug of pride at the compliment. If anyone could appreciate good craftsmanship, it was Andrea Rhodea. “You know that it broke my heart when I heard you’d been taken. So much promise, snatched from us in an instant.”

He said that, but last Reno had heard, Andrea was on his way to earning a seat in Don Corneo’s private box at the coliseum. Another petty lord of Wall Market, farming bridal candidates for the don. Reno wondered how many of Andrea’s _‘promising’_ young dancers and hostesses would win a one-way trip into the fetid bowels of Corneo’s mansion.

There was no use dwelling on it. Reno and Rude had tried taking down the don over two years ago and had fucked it up so royally, it was amazing they hadn’t gotten liquidated over it. The only good thing to come out of that time was some hot and heavy making out with his partner, and even that hadn’t gone anywhere.

Andrea stepped up onto the platform beside Reno, slipping an arm around his waist with such confidence and ease that Reno forgot to flinch. “The life of a professional killer would seem to suit you,” he purred close to his ear, “but show me that artist again, the sensual grace I know I taught you.”

And then, before Reno could scoff or argue, Andrea was taking his hand, guiding him into a spin. He moved, and Reno moved with him. It came naturally, old muscle memories unlocking with each step and twist and bend, fluid and easy, some hardwired reflex anticipating how Andrea would lead him before he did it.

Andrea lowered him into a dip, Reno’s balance held literally in his hands as he dangled off the edge of the low platform. His head tipped back, throat exposed while Andrea ran light fingers from his clavicle down the opened front of his shirt, over the ghost of his chest scar, to the hollow of his belly button and the little metal stud there.

“Magnificent,” Andrea murmured, like they were the only two people in the room, and _fuck_ , Reno could understand why clients creamed themselves just hearing this guy talk. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to come back and dance for me?”

Reno forced out a laugh. “Sorry. Turking’s a lifetime appointment.”

“Is that so? More’s the pity.”

There was a soft sound, the swish of the green room door sliding open and closed. Reno, still hanging halfway off the platform, saw a pair of dark boots coming around the corner of the privacy wall and felt his heart stutter.

“Am I interrupting?” Rude asked, in that careful, dispassionate tone of his.

Reno fought past the blinded-prey-animal paralysis and squirmed to right himself. Andrea, to his credit, responded smoothly and straightened up, seeing to it that Reno was all the way back on his feet before relaxing his grip. He kept an arm wrapped loosely around Reno’s waist, hand resting at his hip.

“Not at all,” Andrea said mildly, back to his normal levels of seductive. “Rudolfo, yes? Jules asked me to pass along his regards.”

Reno, faced with either hopping off the platform or possibly exploding, chose to peel out of Andrea’s embrace and onto solid floor again.

“Heeey, partner!” he said, smoothing down the front of his shirt but hesitating on fixing the buttons, like it would be an admission of guilt or something. The tailor was already sweeping in with his tape measure and little notebook again. “Y’know it’s bad luck to see each other before the wedding.”

If Rude batted an eye, there was no way to tell. “You want me to ignore you for the next two days?” he asked.

“Wh -- No, I was just -- Would you take that outside?” Reno pleaded finally, indicating the takeaway bag Rude held tucked against his chest like a sports ball. “I’m not gonna eat lunch in the same place Heidegger gets his beard groomed.”

Rude shifted his weight on his feet like he was ready to comply, but his gaze drifted back to Andrea, who was observing them both now with interest. Reno didn’t know how much Rude knew about his time in Wall Market -- hopefully, very little -- but he had to know enough about Andrea Rhodea not to take what he’d just seen seriously.

And even if it had been real, what could Rude say about it? He’d had a million chances to make a claim on Reno and he hadn’t gone for it once.

“It’s fine, okay?” Reno insisted, when Rude didn’t budge. “We’re almost ready to break. Probably.” He kicked a leg when the tailor’s hands got too close to his inseam. “Just go wait outside, will ya? You’re making this weird.”

Something passed over Rude’s expression that looked an awful lot like a wince.

“Hurry before it gets cold,” he said finally, throwing one last glance toward Andrea before he excused himself.

The door had barely shut before Andrea was drifting over again, a devilish sparkle in his eyes.

“So,” Andrea said, all his careful poise unable to hide the underlying glee of a teenage gossip. “When did this start?”

“Shut up,” said Reno. And then, on the remote chance it would successfully derail him, “You signed the fucking NDA.”

“Oh, I’d never tell a soul.” And maybe that was true, insofar as Shinra’s NDAs came with some pretty lethal terms. “But to think. Corneo’s old prize fighter and ‘the bride who got away’...”

Reno flared his nostrils, bunching his hand into a fist. “If you were anyone else, you old queen--”

Self-preservation instinct kicking in, Andrea declined to finish his thought and offered a polite smile instead, backing subtly out of arm’s reach.

“It’s not my business, of course,” he said. “I’m only here to make you lovely. The rest is up to you.”

* * *

# -1 (Friday)

Three days wasn’t actually a lot of time to prep a fake identity, even going off a sparse profile like Ceci’s. Reno knew the broad gestural strokes he had to follow -- any spy worth their paycheck knew how to wear a tux, how to navigate a fancy party, how to bullshit their way through a conversation -- but filling in the details was killing him.

The art thing was a good example. Ceci’s dossier said they were an artist, but it had no examples of the _kind_ of art Ceci made, what styles they painted in, the whitebeards they studied under. A database search turned up the names of several local galleries and a one-paragraph mention in the _Kalm Daily News_ about _‘tender domestic portraits,’_ so Reno could at least extrapolate on the paintings’ contents, if anybody asked. Would anybody ask? Probably not; the people at these parties all wanted to listen to themselves talk way more than they wanted to hear about someone else. But the last time Reno skimped on the hobbies part of a cover story he got a target prematurely murdered and a two-week suspension, so best to do this by the book. He never wanted to hear Tseng utter the word _‘unprofessional’_ again.

Then there was the matter of Rude’s cover. Tseng had vetoed the siblings angle pretty much immediately, saying Rude and Reno could never pull it off. He was probably right, unfortunately, but that meant spending their last prep day working out how to sell the whole _‘couple’_ thing.

“Come _on_ ,” Reno said, almost shouting when Rude bumped his foot for the fifth time. “It’s a stupid basic two-step dance; any greasefaced teenager knows how to do this!”

“Sorry,” Rude muttered, avoiding his partner’s gaze in a way that made Reno desperately want to kick him in the shins. He held his hands aloft like something was physically preventing him from touching Reno’s waist whenever the music stopped playing. “Just can’t get the rhythm down.”

“Bullshit, it’s not the rhythm. Emma! Get over here for a sec.”

Emma, who had been seated quietly and staring a book when not managing the boombox, rose dutifully from her chair. She crossed the training room to them.

“Yes, senpai?” she asked, stopping to stand at military ease.

“Just say ‘sir,’ will ya?”

Emma’s eyes flicked up and down her superior’s current outfit, lips poised like she was about to argue that _her_ word was unisex, whereas Reno’s attire did not remotely cue ‘sir.’ To be fair, it didn’t especially cue ‘ma’am’ either; for all that Andrea rambled on about high-handed gender theory shit, if you gave him a note like ‘androgynous’ he sure could build a great wardrobe around it.

Being one of the department’s smarter new hires, Emma managed to hold off comment entirely. Instead, she prompted, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Trade places with me,” said Reno, and rolled his eyes when both Emma and Rude had the gall to look startled. “It’s one set! I’m trying to prove a point here.”

He backed up, waiting for Emma to switch whatever mental gears she needed to adjust before shaking her hair back and stepping neatly into Reno’s old place, hands up and ready to place them on Rude’s shoulders. Rude cleared his throat -- twice -- and started haltingly bringing his hands to her waist, arms twitching like she might electrocute him on contact.

How a guy who had dated so much could be this bad around people, Reno had no idea. You’d think a couple years in this job would burn the gentleman out of anyone. But here Rude was, acting like a virgin going to his first social. 

Reno ran the boombox and watched the dance unfold. It wasn’t especially complex, just the sort of bare minimum polite-society-ing a Turk would be expected to know in an undercover situation or a mandatory appearance at the office solstice party. If they’d _really_ had prep time, Reno would have insisted on practicing something more complex -- maybe something like he’d done with Andrea yesterday -- but as it was he’d settle for just curing Rude’s two-left-feet problem.

“Okay! Stop!” Reno punched a button on the ancient plastic boombox and headed back over to Rude and Emma, who detached from each other as soon as it was appropriate. “Look at that, not a single mistake. So mind saying what the real problem is, partner?”

“It’s just different,” Rude said, with obvious reluctance. Reno briefly missed rookie Rude before the sunglasses, when he couldn’t poker face his way out of a conversation to save his life. “I get distracted.”

“All right, so what the fuck is so distracting?”

“You’re--” Rude fidgeted, gesturing helplessly at Reno’s everything. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Send Emma out first.”

That took Reno aback. Getting Rude to be candid about anything was like pulling teeth -- a practice actually _not_ recommended in the Turk training manuals, because it took a lot of upper body strength and made interrogation suspects harder to understand -- so having him admit that something he was about to say was not for a rookie’s tender ears was pretty wild. Unprecedented, actually.

Reno looked over to where Emma had slunk off to studiously pretend to read again. “Hey, sis. Take five, will ya?”

She didn’t need telling twice. But she did look back over her shoulder as she retreated to the locker room, appraising, like she had an insight into Rude’s thinking that Reno didn’t and knew roughly what the fallout from this was going to be.

When the door was completely shut behind her, Rude cleared his throat again. He adjusted his shades, keeping his gaze fixed on the training room tile.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, quiet and deliberate. “If you’re that pent up, you oughta just ask.”

“You think I’m--?” Now that would be a hell of a long con, making the same stupid joke for two years on the off-chance that one day Veld would say yes. What a cunning plan to seduce his coworker. “I don’t wanna play fucking honeymooners with you, man!”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Bullshit, you know what I’m about. And obviously you aren’t into it. Guess that’s what I get for chopping my tits off, huh?”

Rude blanched. “I didn’t mean--”

“It’s _fine_ , I get it!” Reno yelled, hating the burning sensation building behind his eyes. “But would you stop being a fucking child and just do your job already?”

He didn’t know at what point Rude got him against a wall, when he closed the distance between them. Suddenly Reno was boxed in, one powerful arm braced right beside his ear, Rude just _looming_ over him, a solid wall of muscle and rich cologne and the earthy scent of those imported cigarettes he liked to smoke after his shifts.

“I am doing my job,” Rude said, in a quiet, lethal half-murmur that Reno felt more than heard. At this distance, he could see past the dark glasses of Rude’s shades to the faint shapes of his eyes darting back and forth, scanning Reno’s expression like he was waiting for him to toss up a last-minute white flag. “If I wasn’t, you’d know.”

He was right about that, at least. There was absolutely nothing professional about the way Rude closed the remaining distance between them a moment later, the way he crushed their mouths together in a deep, possessive kiss like he was trying to swallow up every sound and ounce of breath Reno had. There was nothing joblike in how Rude grabbed Reno harshly by the arm to hold him up when his knees started to buckle, or how he wedged a thigh between Reno’s legs.

There _was_ something a little bit gentlemanly about the way he finally eased up to let his partner breathe, but the huff of amusement seeing Reno dizzy and flushed undercut it a little. Rude brushed a few strands of loosely permed curls from the corner of Reno’s mouth.

“That clear things up for you?” he asked.

“ _No._ What the fuck?” Reno exclaimed, still breathless and annoyed about it. “You can’t just pull something like this right before a mission! What the hell am I ‘sposed to do about it?” Apparently he’d been so off-base on Rude he’d practically been playing on a different field. 

Rude shrugged, already extracting himself and smoothing down the front of his jacket, satisfied he had made his point. “Try to stay professional,” he suggested, with a half-smirk that bordered on cruel.

“I’d like you to _professionally_ get on your knees and--”

There was a fastidious knock from the locker room door, the sound of the world’s fastest five minute break coming to an end.

Reno growled, hitching and adjusting his drapey robes into some semblance of decency. Fine. If that was how it was going to be, he’d show Rude he could give as good as he got.

“Hey, Emma,” he said as the junior Turk popped her blonde head in. “Rude was just saying we oughta try a tango.”

His partner’s eyebrows shot up toward what would be his hairline. He looked between Reno and Emma, like he was hoping at least one of them would call the prank. But Emma simply nodded and went to change the tracks on the boombox.

“You wanna play this game on hard mode, buddy?” Reno said to Rude, low enough for just the two of them to hear, as the violin intro picked up and he slithered an arm up over his partner’s shoulder. “I can outlast you no problem.”

Scowling, Rude hooked a hand around Reno’s waist, squeezing a lot tighter than he strictly needed to. They’d never practiced this one with each other, but it was still part of Turk training, albeit more of an advanced module. Reno had even studied both roles, on the off-chance Rude felt like doing it backwards and in heels.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” Rude muttered, less like a confession and more like he was making a complaint to management. He took his partner’s right hand in his left, lacing their fingers together so snugly Reno could feel his knuckles creak.

“Too bad, so sad,” Reno said. He leaned up to press a lingering kiss along Rude’s jaw, letting his lips trail down a line in his throat as Rude led them into the first movement. “Enjoy your fucking blue balls, partner.”

Although truth be told, Reno wasn’t sure how he was going to survive these next few days now either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> -Brief accidental misgendering.  
> -Alcohol use.  
> -Alcohol-fueled nonconsensual sexy-touching.

# 1 (Saturday)

The only non-work occasion on which Reno had passed through Costa del Sol had been when he’d run away from home at the age of [REDACTED], too young and innocent to fully appreciate all that the city had to offer.

Even so, he looked back on those times with some fondness. The boiling midnight streets, the pulsing underground clubs, the advanced dehydration. The days he spent busking for spare change on the boardwalk, before finally scamming a retiree couple out of a few thousand gil and smuggling aboard a Shinra freighter bound for Junon. What a tender youth he’d been.

Later, as a rookie Turk, Reno had jumped at the chance to return -- only to realize he’d be spending his whole time in del Sol surveilling some unappreciative jackass while roasting inside a black wool suit. More recently, he’d been in the area to press-gang a few SOLDIER candidates and squash some terrorists, and that hadn’t been a great time either. Since then, Reno had resolved to use his first real, no-bullshit, actual vacation to enjoy Costa del Sol how it was meant to be enjoyed: drunk and topless.

He was currently managing one of those, at least.

“Oh hell yeah, feel that breeze!” he exclaimed, nearly stumbling down the airstair as he emerged from the plane. Rude managed to catch him by the arm before he wobbled over the railing. “I told Alvis, I fucking _told_ him it’d be cooler here than in the city!”

Delicious fresh air, blue skies stretching as far as the eye could see, jeweled sunlight glittering on ocean waves. _This_ was real living, not cooped up inside the world’s biggest pizza oven, filing reports and memos and TI-138s until his fingers fell off. Reno shielded his eyes from the brilliantly clear late-morning sun, missing his goggles-that-he-never-used.

Costa del Sol’s grandiosely-named ‘international airport’ was mostly just a stretch of black asphalt with a radio tower at the edge of town. Apart from billionaires and the odd private venture, air travel was still largely A Shinra Thing. For discretion’s sake, Reno and Rude had taken a company-owned jet across the ocean then switched to a chartered plane once they were in-country. To Rude’s dismay and Reno’s spiteful alcoholic delight, the private plane had had a pretty robust in-flight drinks service.

“You can see the beach, look!”

Rude continued steering him across the tarmac. “Yes, dear,” he muttered.

The words didn’t have as much of a sobering effect as Rude might’ve hoped. Reno tugged absently at the itchy, semi-sheer material draped over his chest; he’d waited his whole damn life for an opportunity to go around shirtless in public without anyone giving him shit about it, and his new-and-improved chest _deserved_ a grand beachfront debut.

“Let’s check it out, just real quick!”

“Later.”

“Come onnnnn, last time I was here there was this great dive bar right on the water that served the _best_ fucking ten-gil beer and those little octopus things with the dough around them. If it’s still there I’m buying out the whole place and putting it on Veld’s credit card.”

“Let’s get settled in first… honey.”

 _That_ one broke through the fun happy brain fog. Reno stumbled in his designer platform sandals, sobering to maybe a tenth of his usual lucidity. Right. Work. He was still at work. Straightening up, Reno swept a lustrous wave of ruby-red hair out of his eyes and narrowly avoided smudging the makeup concealing his face tats.

There was a ‘baggage claim’ attached to the radio control tower that doubled as a travelers’ lounge, a glorified shack kitted out with industrial-strength air conditioning, ‘rustic’ wicker furniture, and a fully-stocked bar. In an average summer season, when there wasn’t a big clandestine auction set to go down in a few days, the place must be so deserted the management hadn’t even considered the need to staff up: there was exactly one attendant on duty, a lanky teenager darting back and forth between concierge and the bar with such frenetic urgency you’d think she had an electric shock collar monitoring her productivity or something.

“Welcome to Costa del Sol!” the teen said breathlessly, colliding with the welcome podium and just narrowly bracing herself on her arms, bartender towel still draped over her shoulder. “Right this way, Mister and Missus... Toe? To… ome…?”

“Toast,” Reno said, with all the satisfaction of slipping on a pair of shoes he'd properly broken in. “And it’s ‘Mx.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“Mx Toast. Not Missus.” It didn’t really bother Reno either way; before getting on The Good Hormones covered under Shinra’s health plan, he’d gotten misgendered plenty, and he had a tried-and-true method for dealing with it involving bolt cutters and a canister of gasoline. But he’d left his tools at home and Ceci’s invitation had said ‘their,’ so he might as well commit to the bit. “Thanks for the hospitality and all, but I think we’re just gonna grab our luggage and jet. There a taxi stand around here somewhere?”

“Oh -- yes -- just a moment, I have a card here--”

“Ceci Toast? My goodness, Ceci, is that you?”

Cold dread spidered up Reno’s back, crawling straight past two whiskeys and skittering its many legs just beneath the surface of his sobriety. He wrenched his mouth into some imitation of a smile and turned around.

There, picking herself up from a crackling wicker chair that by no means belonged in an indoors lounge, was a stout, roughly middle-aged woman in altogether too many layers of dress, wearing something on her head that appeared at a glance to be an entire taxidermied bird. In her silk-gloved hand she daintily carried a wine glass, despite it very definitely not being past 11am yet.

“I _thought_ I saw your name on Nguyen’s list!” The woman turned to speak to the desiccated corpse hovering near her shoulder. “Darling, look! It’s Ceci Toast, just like I told you!”

Reno could just about feel the bottom of his stomach falling out. There it went, their whole mission. He had the names of various dwarf chocobo sub-breeds leaking out of his ears, bows and tea manners and _fucking_ tango steps drilled so hard into his body he couldn’t come up with a good sexual innuendo for it, and his cover was about to be blown within, what, five minutes of landing? All because somebody had skimped on the ‘known associates’ section in the dossier.

Reno was aware of Rude squeezing his arm just above the elbow, like he was trying to stop him from tipping over again.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Rude said to the squat woman.

“Oh! Why, of course, I suppose we’ve never met face-to-face. Ceci dear is such a private person.” She turned and addressed Reno again, anemically pale eyes shining. “But you must know the advice you sent me last year saved our dear Fropsie’s life, the little troublemaker. It was Trickler’s Syndrome, just like you said.”

Reno was on slightly firmer ground with this. Three late nights cramming _The Care and Feeding of Your Dwarf Chocobo_ bobbed to the surface of his waterlogged brain. “Uh. Right. Trickler’s Syndrome. Yeah. I thought that might’ve been it. So the beak, uhhh, _discharge_ cleared right up...?”

“Our Fropsie’s never been healthier! But where are my manners?” The woman returned her animated attention to Rude. “I’m Tilly von Astur, and this is my husband, Tully.”

More cogs slotted into place in Reno’s head. Mathilda von Astur, heiress to a quickly-vanishing oil fortune; Tulson von Astur ne Ramkin, an ‘old money’ parasite whose singular accomplishment in life had been tricking the von Astur family into believing he was solvent enough to marry their eldest daughter. Tseng’s briefing had identified these two as likely auction guests and Reno had been sure to at least skim the high-level details.

“Right, yeah, nice to put a face to a name,” Reno said, swept up in a combination of unearned confidence. “This is my partner, Ru--”

His brain caught up in time to clamp his mouth shut before the final consonant, but it was too little, too late. Beside him, he could feel Rude straightening up uncomfortably.

“‘Rue’…?” Tilly inquired.

“Uh. Yeah,” Rude said reluctantly, adjusting his glasses. “Roux. With an ‘X.’”

“How delightfully cosmopolitan!”

* * *

“Look, I’m _sorry_ ,” Reno hissed, when they finally extricated themselves from the von Asturs and managed to collect their luggage, which had only just been wheeled in from the tarmac. Strictly speaking, Rude carried the bags; Ceci Toast was far too well-bred for any heavy lifting beyond a designer purse. “Take it out on me once we get to the hotel, will ya?”

“We’ll need to fix the ID,” Rude muttered, one massive suitcase in each hand. “Passport. Handkerchiefs…” Monogrammed pocket squares had been one of Andrea’s few modifications to Rude’s usual work look, and they definitely didn’t feature an ‘R.’

“ _Okay,_ yes, I get it!” Reno snapped. “Can it wait till I’m out of these stupid shoes?”

As he pushed open the glass doors leading out onto the pavement, the white-hot sledgehammer of the sun swung down on them, much less pleasant than it had been earlier. At the curb waited a taxi cab covered with crinkling yellow paint, the lounge attendant having gone ahead and called the dispatch while Rude and Reno suffered through conversation with the von Asturs on the riveting subject of dwarf chocobo skin diseases. 

Rude helped the driver stow the luggage and then passed him a folded piece of paper with an address. Their hotel reservation was in downtown in the heart of tourist territory, nothing fancy; nice as Turk pay was, it wasn’t nice enough for Reno to afford much more than an economy single along Costa del Sol’s main strip. He and Rude could look forward to no room service, no ventilation, and probably cockroaches in the shower, but at least it was close to all the nightclubs. And, most importantly, it was the kind of place Reno could bring a different hookup back to every night without anyone at the front desk batting an eye.

Ceci Toast, of course, faced a lifetime of scandal if word got out among the von Astur types just where they were staying. But Reno had a sheepish ‘last minute mix-up’ story prepped and ready to go if anyone inquired, and it wasn’t like he gave two shits about what the real Ceci’s reputation would look like after this.

Reno stretched out in the back seat of the cab, once the driver was well underway and not likely to overhear them. “Nnnmm, sucks to be you, partner. This game’s gonna be over before it’s even started.”

“How’s that?” Rude asked beside him.

“A classic for the ages: two Turks, one bed.” Reno twined a couple fingers together to illustrate. “Hope ya like being the big spoon.”

What did you call this anyway, some kind of reverse gay chicken? Up until yesterday, Reno had been braced to spend their undercover mission slowly dying from the same probably-unrequited lust that had been killing him for two and a half years, and then Rude had gone and upended the whole board. Now the challenge was seeing how long they could stand to _not_ fuck.

Reno was willing to bet his (meager) life savings that Rude would crack before he did. The deck was stacked against him so high that Reno almost felt a little sorry for his partner. ‘Almost’ being the operative word -- as far as Reno was concerned, all this was Rude’s just desserts for dragging his feet so long. Now they’d see how the big guy liked waking up every morning to a gorgeous redhead snuggling his dick.

Outside the cab window, Reno watched store fronts and food carts stream by. The driver sure seemed to be taking the not-so-scenic route; they had overshot downtown entirely and were getting close to the turnoff for the southbound highway.

Beside him, Reno caught sight of Rude’s mouth tugging upward into a smirk. “What?” he asked.

* * *

So much for ‘only one bed.’

This was not the hotel. It was a condo. A villa. Two stories, a wine cellar, five bedrooms, two balconies, and a hot tub. Perched strategically on Costa del Sol’s southern cliffs with a billion-gil view of the beaches and main boardwalk, and a sniper’s line-of-sight on the big glass windows of Soluna Grand Hotel’s luxury ballroom.

That last detail had probably been the main determining factor. Far be it from Tseng to upgrade Reno’s hotel reservation because he felt sorry for ruining his vacation or something. But you couldn’t argue with the results.

“Hoo.” Reno let out a low whistle as Rude dropped the suitcases just inside the door of the master bedroom, the carpet so luxuriously thick it completely absorbed the sound. “What’d they do to get something like this in peak tourist season, kidnap an exec’s daughter?”

“It belongs to the Shinras,” Rude said, going straight to the sliding glass doors to scope for blind spots on the balcony. “Through a shell company.”

“Pft, of course.” Reno took the opportunity to toss his clunky statement earrings onto the nightstand and kick his platform sandals off. He felt like a fucking toddler standing next to Rude without them, but it did make flopping down onto the massive king-size bed that much easier. Reno sank into the cool chocobo-down comforter with a pleased sigh. “Anything interesting out there?”

“Missing some coverage around the hills. We’ll need a few extra bodies.”

Shinra Company maintained a heliport and some shipping berths down on the docks, and most of its security deployment could be requisitioned with a single phone call. One of the perks of the job. SOLDIERs might get all the press, but institutionally Turks wielded way more power.

Rude stepped away from the windows and took in the sight of his partner sprawled out on the bed. Reno, grinning, spread his legs so the view was as appealing as possible.

“I could do with an extra body over here,” he drawled, and then snorted at his own awful come-on. 

It earned a reproving look from Rude. “You really gonna do this while we’re working?” he asked.

“Why not?” Reno countered, making a performance out of sliding a hand down toward his belt, the gold-threaded cord that was the only thing keeping his flowy, haute couture jumpsuit-whatever-thing from becoming indecent. “It’s in-character.”

“Hrm.”

Rude glanced back at the sliding glass doors, assessing the lightweight curtains to either side. Anyone nosy enough to spy on them would need a pretty powerful scope to see into the room during daytime, but that was Rude for you, always covering all the angles.

Something must’ve got him feeling adventurous, however, because a moment later he was padding over toward the bed, curtains untouched.

“First,” he said, kneeling on the edge of the mattress as he loosened his tie: “we gotta set some ground rules.”

Reno put on a pout. Even now, with him _literally_ spread out before his partner and ready for the taking, Rude was getting hung up on how to be Correctly Horny. “How ‘bout we don’t and say we did?”

“I’m serious.”

“Ugh, fine. I _‘enthusiastically consent’_ to all of it. Happy?”

Rude’s frown deepened. “Not the kind of rules I was thinking,” he said. He climbed closer until he was kneeling over his partner, hands planted on the mattress to either side of his head. “Rule one: no bars, no clubs.”

Reno squawked. That was a good 90% of his off-time gone in an instant. “You gonna at least let me hit the beach at any point, _‘darling’?_ ”

“Yeah, we’ll do the beach,” Rude allowed. “But no swimming.”

“Ceci’s a champion surfer. I just decided that right now. It’s part of my character. if I don’t get at least two hours in the water each day it’s gonna blow my cover.”

With a disapproving scowl, Rude brought a hand up and pinched the tip of Reno’s nose.

“Ow!” Reno cupped his hands over his face, not in pain so much as surprised. He and Rude roughhoused plenty in their daily lives, even when they weren’t drunk or buzzing with post-fight adrenaline, but a dumbass remark like that was usually met with a head smack or a boot to his ass, not _cutesy shit_.

“One hour,” Rude said, as grim-faced as ever. “And you gotta use the private beach.”

Reno’s eyes lit up, feigned injury instantly forgotten. “Shit, we get a private beach? You shoulda just led with that.”

“Didn’t want you getting all excited.”

“Well, you fucked up now. So that’s rule two; do I get to make some of these, or is your husband character really leaning into the ‘controlling patriarch’ schtick?”

A small wince. “Fine,” Rude said. “Your turn.”

“Rule three: one kiss per day, minimum.”

“...Would it kill you to focus?”

“I _am_ focusing.” On his lips, but that still counted. “You wanna sell this married couple thing or not? One kiss per day, and it’s gotta be the real lovey-dovey shit, no copping out with some boring little peck on the cheek or whatever. Ideally in public, but I’ll also accept here on this big ol’ bed.”

Rude narrowed his eyes, barely visible through his shades. Clearly he wouldn’t go for the bait that easy, but then, where would the fun be if he did?

“Rule four,” Reno continued, having a nice time of this. “No looking at tits.”

“I don’t--”

“Uh, _yeah_ , you do. All the time.”

Not Reno’s, of course. Not anymore. He could get all fucked up and insecure about that, but in the end it was just facts. Like how even now Reno was certain that Rude’s attention on him was mostly circumstantial and he’d lose all interest once another Chelsea or Dominique or Byron came along.

“You’re a married man, Mister ‘Roux’ Armando Toast. You go ogling every pair of D-cups you see on the boardwalk and I’ll have to come up with some bullshit ‘jealous spouse’ routine to deal with it. Do ya really wanna cause that kinda scene?”

“No,” Rude conceded. Then, likely because he didn’t realize he was close enough for Reno to see his eyes moving behind his glasses, he took quick stock of his partner’s body: his lean chest, his sharp collarbone, the curve of his throat. All among Reno’s nicer features, if he said so himself. “Rule five. Two-drink maximum at parties.”

“What? Bullshit. Make it three.”

“Two,” Rude insisted. “Wine or champagne only. None of those ‘cocktails’ that’re half vodka.”

Reno groaned, rolled his head back on the sheets. “Just make me stick to water, why doncha? Fine. Rule six--”

“Rule six,” Rude cut him off, the corner of his mouth curling in a way that just couldn’t be legal. “No drugs.”

“Who the fuck says _‘drugs’?_ ” Reno asked, mimicking Rude’s stuffed-shirt narc voice. “In that case, rule seven: no jerking off.”

Rude bunched his eyebrows together, the start of a protest perched on his lips. He schooled his expression at the last moment and said instead, “Rule eight: no hookups.”

Now that was a bridge too far. If they took as given that this wager of theirs wouldn’t get settled within the first couple days of their mission, what the hell was Reno supposed to do with his evenings? But if he backed down at this stage, he might as well just throw the whole thing right here.

“Fine, no randos,” he said. “Rule nine…” He adjusted himself against the mattress, squaring his jaw. “Get me outta these clothes.”

Rude huffed through his nose. “That’s not a ground rule.”

“Yeah it is. Half the shit Andrea made me pack needs an extra person to get in and out of.” His present outfit was not actually among those, but what good was a policy selectively applied? “You wanna take care of that like a good husband, or do you want me bringing over some tender rookie from the security corps to play handmaid?”

That got the muscles in Rude’s jaw working. It wasn’t clear which part he was offended by -- the idea of some teenage security grunt having access to Reno’s body that he didn’t, or the shamelessness with which Reno threatened to corrupt the dubiously innocent -- but either way it did the job.

Rude shifted his weight, one hand trailing down Reno’s side until he reached the corded belt at his waist. He traced the knot for a moment, gloved fingers distractingly light, and then, sight unseen, he began working it open.

Reno sighed out a long-held breath, satisfaction and a bit of warm fuzzy residual intoxication melting the tension out of his shoulders. He licked his lips appreciatively as Rude undid the first loop and continued moving with painstaking slowness, drawing out the action like he wanted to make Reno squirm with impatience.

It _was_ kinda vexing, but so was Rude’s mouth, and that was easier for him to do something about. Reno leaned up, gathering his partner’s lips into a light, brushing kiss, then a firmer one, rolling his bottom lip against Rude’s and sucking tenderly until teeth parted and tongues met, warm like aged whiskey or the perfect first drag of a new cigarette. Not harsh or possessive like yesterday’s kiss in the training hall back in Midgar; this was slow and easy, the sort of natural rhythm they used in their work lives, taking and giving in equal measure.

Rude hummed, the vibration resonating bone-deep and leaving Reno’s lips luxuriously numb. Reno slid a leg over his partner’s hip. He was already slick down below, some feverish animalistic need clawing up through whatever minuscule self-restraint he’d had to begin with, announcing that _fuck yes, this was going to happen_ , he’d won, Rude was going to _split him open and pound him senseless_ and these two and a half years of waiting will have been worth it--

Something cut through the static in Reno’s head then, unbidden and extremely unwanted. It was the sharp three-note trill of a factory-default cellular ringtone.

With a reluctant groan, Rude broke the kiss, cool air sweeping in and leaving Reno’s mouth bereft and tingly as his partner shifted his weight back onto his knees and dug a hand into his pocket. He produced his company-issue PHS, flashing and ringing the most arousal-killing jingle ever devised by human minds.

Rude flipped the phone open. “Sir?”

It was Tseng. With the time difference it had to be late evening over in Midgar, but of course he sounded as crisply alert as ever.

“My timetable indicates you should be installed in your new base of operations by now.” Even without putting him on speaker, Reno was close enough to hear every word. “How’s the view?”

“Not bad,” said Rude, easing Reno’s hand off the nape of his neck and adjusting his shirt collar. He nudged at his partner’s leg still crooked around his waist and frowned when Reno refused to budge. “Still a few kinks to iron out.”

“I’ll show you ‘kinks,’” Reno muttered, wrapping his other leg around Rude so that his ankles were locked together behind his back, further flouting efforts to separate them.

“Requisition what you need from the base. Just try to keep it discreet,” Tseng said, not hearing or choosing not to acknowledge whatever noises Reno was making. “And how is your partner getting on?”

Reno snarled under his breath, “Well, I’m sure as hell not getting _off_ \--” He found his mouth forced shut with a stifled _‘mmf,’_ as Rude closed one broad, powerful hand over it.

“Same as usual,” Rude answered coolly, over Reno’s rising muffled protests. “Want me to put him on?”

“That won’t be necessary. I only meant to touch base and see that you had arrived with your cover still intact.”

“Mostly. Just gotta update a few papers.”

“Ah. I take it Reno fumbled the introductions.”

Reno yelled something that might’ve been _‘fuck off, Tseng!’_ if Rude’s hand weren’t preventing vowels just then. 

“Just mine,” Rude said, a true white knight to the end. “We can salvage it.”

“Good. I’ll have a name and address of a local forger forwarded to you within the hour. Try to take care of that today.” There was a faint whisper of papers getting shuffled on the other end of the line. “You’ll serve as our point person for this operation. Reno’s priority should remain the infiltration of the auctioneer’s social circle and gathering intel on the artifact’s location.”

“I’ll convey that to him,” Rude promised, while fixing his partner with a look. Reno answered with a vicious eyeroll. “Anything else?”

Surprisingly, there wasn’t. It sounded like Rude and Tseng already had a lot of the logistical bullshit well in hand, which would’ve been great, if Tseng weren’t treating Rude like a babysitter. What did they expect, that Reno’d just sit around looking pretty while the _real men_ did all the work?

The call ended; Rude flipped his phone shut and tossed it aside on the bed. He released his grip over Reno’s mouth as well. Reno worked his sore jaw, knowing without a mirror that his Tasteful Unisex Lip Color had gotten hopelessly smudged. 

“Great,” he said, a little hoarsely. He hadn’t been yelling _that_ much, had he? “Where were we?”

A crooked smirk extended across Rude’s face. He got a firm hand around Reno’s leg beneath the knee and began prying it away from his hip.

“You were just leaving,” he prompted.

“Leave where? It’s my bed.”

Rude shrugged, successfully extricating himself and pushing off the mattress. There was a telltale bulge tenting the front of his pants and he had the audacity to not look even remotely concerned about it. “Big house,” he said. “Plenty of room to spread out.”

“You gotta be kidding me.” Reno sprang up out of bed, the impetus to act cool losing out to sheer frustration. He reached for Rude’s fly and was held off at arm’s length. “You didn’t even finish getting the belt off!”

Wordlessly, Rude reached over with his free hand and pulled the cord free of its last loop, dropping Reno’s belt to the floor. The loose fabric of his outfit hung open, exposing a line of smooth pale skin from his throat down to his thigh, the crease at his pelvis and the neat patch of brown curls there barely visible. Most of Andrea’s wardrobe picks didn’t allow for anything so plebeian as underwear.

It was nothing Rude hadn’t seen a thousand times in the locker room anyway, not that that prevented him from clearing his throat and pointedly keeping his gaze elsewhere. Irritated, Reno stuck his hand at his hips, which had the plausibly-unintentional effect of revealing even more skin. “What kinda half-assed--?”

Rude shrugged one shoulder, taking an interest in a spot of wall just behind Reno’s head. “You’re the one who wanted to play on hard mode.”

“Tseng’s sending you off for spy thriller shit and I’m stuck here minding the house? What the hell am I ‘sposed to do for the rest of the day, make friends with my hand?”

Rude made a choked noise, managing to turn it into a cough at the last moment. “Rule seven,” he reminded him.

Reno hesitated. “What? No! That’s a -- a _your_ thing, not _my_ \--!”

Too late. He’d lost this one, and Rude wasn’t going to let him forget it. Within seconds his partner had corralled him toward the open doorway, hefting Reno’s suitcase between them with the handle proffered.

“Fucking come on!” Reno ~~whined~~ argued, forced to grab it before Rude simply shoved the luggage against his chest. “You can’t just take the biggest bed for yourself and then not _do_ anything on it!”

“I’ll manage.”

“Just a bit of dry humping! The rules don’t say anything about--”

Rude was still smirking as the door slid shut in Reno’s face.

* * *

“Rrgh!” Reno drove his foot into the side of his luggage, popping the lid and sending expensive tailoring spilling out over the guest bedroom carpet.

He could always cheat, he supposed. Just rub one (or two, or three) off right here and leave his partner none the wiser. Hell, Rude might be doing the same thing at that very moment. But Reno knew better. Rude had already spent more than two years in monklike self-denial over this _thing_ between them; he was perfectly capable of holding out another five days just to get the last word in. And if he could manage that as a cis guy, famously the most weak-willed subsection of humanity on the planet, what the fuck was Reno’s excuse?

Didn’t stop him from feeling like Rude had his pussy locked up in some medieval chastity torture device, though.

The guest bedroom was significantly smaller and plainer than the master suite, but it was still an order of magnitude larger than Reno’s apartment back home, plus the bed was still dangerously inviting. Reno gave serious consideration to just dialing the ceiling fan up to full speed and dropping into bed as-is, still halfway dressed -- but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. _Ceci Magdalene Toast_ would never go to bed at noon no matter how jetlagged they were.

Reno was only halfway through getting his outfits hung up in the walk-in closet (also larger than his apartment) when he heard a door chime coming from downstairs. His first thought was to ignore it -- few good things ever came of answering a doorbell -- but when the chime sounded a second time he groaned and stuck his head out into the hallway, ready to yell at the man of the house to go answer it.

He was met with the soft hiss of a shower from the other side of the wall.

Reno grumbled. He wiped his lipstick with the back of a hand, found a spare belt among his things that didn’t exactly complement the outfit but beat showing up at the door half-naked, and started cinching it into place as he headed downstairs.

The person on the front step was not Tilly, Tully, or any other bloated aristocrat Reno could recognize from his briefings. Going by the polo shirt and khaki, she had to be a courier of some sort, or maybe someone’s assistant.

“Good afternoon, Mx Toast,” she said, dipping her head into a bow. She carried a short stack of slim white envelopes, the top one bearing Ceci’s name in an elegant script. “My employer Mister Nguyen wishes to formally invite you and your husband to dinner this evening at the Soluna Grand Hotel.”

“Great, honored,” Reno deadpanned, still too crabby to bother putting on a performance. “How many people at this thing?”

“An intimate affair, only about seven people, including Mister Nguyen,” the messenger assured him. “He says he was surprised to learn you had accepted his invitation; he wishes to receive you properly and introduce you to a few of your fellow guests.”

“Uh-huh.” Other invitees for the auction, she meant; maybe even whoever was putting the Ancient artifact up for sale. “That’s it there?” Reno asked, indicating the top envelope in her little stack.

“Ah -- yes, as well as invitations to functions some of the other guests will be holding over the next few days, and several calling cards.” She held the stack out to him with both hands and he accepted it, thumbing through them like a deck of cards. “You’re very popular, Mx Toast,” she added, as though confiding a secret people usually paid good money for.

“That’s me, regular belle of the ball,” Reno muttered. He got to near the bottom of the stack and found a crisp eggshell-white business card, bearing just a name and an international phone number. “Who’s this guy?” he asked, plucking it out from the stack and twiddling it between two fingers. “‘Giorno Ladresco’?”

“Oh, Don Ladresco!” the messenger said, brightening with genuine enthusiasm before containing herself. “He’s an old friend of my employer. I believe he’s related to Dio, the theme park entrepreneur?”

“Yeah, but what’s he a ‘don’ of?” Reno had a hardwired dislike for the word. “What’s his territory?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about his business.” She sounded earnest enough, but if Reno were in her shoes (and he had been, at various points in his life), he’d be holding something out for a tip. “I believe he recently returned from Icicle?”

That tracked. There were a lot of Ancient sites on the Northern Continent, all pretty much picked clean by modern archaeologists, but maybe there was enough shit still in the ground up there that somebody got lucky. And then, rather than hand it over to a museum or sell it to the international megacorp with the actual resources to analyze it, maybe that Somebody had decided to auction it off to a bunch of aristocrats with private collections.

“And is he gonna be at tonight’s ‘intimate affair’?”

The girl finally seemed to catch wise. She shut her mouth, lips perched into a small Freyra-like smile as she gave Reno an expectant look.

He sighed and cast about the entryway for something near-to-hand. Reno couldn’t really begrudge the kid for the hustle, but it wasn’t like this outfit had pockets. Luckily, it seemed he’d tossed aside his purse before heading upstairs earlier; he grabbed it from the finely-upholstered armchair it had been carelessly draped over and produced a 5,000 gil note.

The messenger examined it noncommittally, running her thumb over the paper. After a moment, Reno added another 5,000. It wasn't like it was coming out of his paycheck anyway.

“I believe he will be, yes,” she said, granting him a service worker smile as she disappeared the bills into her pocket. “Don Ladresco is an older gentleman, fairly short, graying hair and a beard. He likes red wine and Wutaian cuisine,” she added, like she was throwing in a freebie.

Really not 10,000 gil worth of intel, but it was enough to go on. Reno shooed her off with a flick of his wrist and glanced back into the darkened villa.

The shower was still running upstairs. Probably a cold one, if Rude was having as much trouble as Reno suspected.

Well, turnabout was fair play. If Rude could go haring off to visit forgers in del Sol’s black market, Reno could get up to some spy shit of his own. Worst case, he’d get a couple free drinks out of the deal.

* * *

The Soluna Grand Hotel was one of those buildings that liked to call itself the ‘crown jewel’ of Costa del Sol: it towered over the skyline, a torqued pyramid of glittering white-gold and glass, boasting 108 rooms, a five-star restaurant, and a dedicated business center. For people who didn’t literally live in Midgar’s Shinra Building, it probably seemed pretty legit.

Reno stepped out of the cab in heels a good two inches steeper than he was used to, dark-red chiffon skirt spilling behind him like a trail of delicate flower petals. He stood and smoothly accepted the driver’s hand for balance -- completely unnecessary, but important for the look of the thing. Around him, he heard murmurs start to rise up, snatches of curious conversation as del Sol’s vacationing elite milling near the valet stand took notice of the new arrival.

This look was decidedly more feminine than most of the outfits Andrea had selected for him -- curve-hugging, a side slit that went all the way up to his hip, semi-sheer tights. But he enjoyed the plunging neckline, which (in addition to being a Rhodea signature) left no questions about the shape of his chest and exposed nearly as much skin as his normal work look.

Reno had picked it mostly because he could put it on solo with minimal jury-rigging. Even if he’d wanted to tip Rude off about this little excursion, his partner had been off on his own adventure since the afternoon.

He glided across the carpet toward Soluna’s front doors, which parted obediently, their twin doormen bowing in unison as he passed. Another attendant appeared at his elbow to lead him across the marble foyer, scarpering at an uneven pace so that he neither walked out ahead nor fell behind.

“Right this way, Mx Toast!” he was saying breathlessly, a real credit to either hotel staff training or the efficiency of the local rumor mill. He gestured with a flourish toward a pair of brass bannistered doors at the far end of the lobby, sectioned off with velvet rope and flanked by two delicate-looking easels holding what was probably some ‘menu of the day’ business.

There was a doorman here as well, of the type that made Rude look like the puny kid nobody wanted on their team at recess. Reno doubted a place like this had ever had to bounce someone more difficult than a middle-class lady demanding to see the manager, but a quick glance at the guy’s lapel pin told Reno this wasn’t hotel staff; he was somebody’s private muscle. Nguyen’s? Ladresco’s? Someone else’s?

Mr. Bodyguard dipped his head at Reno as he approached. “Mx Toast,” he rumbled, with the kind of deep bass voice that, Reno had to admit, would have him climbing into the dude’s lap if he wasn’t on company time. “My employer is expecting you.”

The restaurant was standard rich people fare, intimately-lit quiet tables with a baby grand in the corner and a gleaming oasis of a wine bar. Reno followed Mr. Bodyguard to the VIP section, which lay in a quiet corner beyond yet another velvet rope and a sound-resistant partition. It was more reminiscent of an upscale drug den than a private party: several long, leather couches and the type of overstuffed chaise lounges noblewomen fainted on in period films were arranged in a circle around a low glass table, which was laden with champagne flutes and tiered serving trays piled high with crab legs and delicately-prepared shrimp.

Clustered toward one side of the circle were the host and his entourage. Reno recognized Nguyen immediately from the briefing files: middle-aged with full cheeks and a neatly-groomed goatee, a conservative dark gray suit -- and a lapel pin that matched Mr. Bodyguard’s, so that was one mystery solved. He was reclined on the arm of a couch and speaking amiably with Tilly von Astur, who seemed to be several drinks further along than she’d been that morning. Both looked up when Reno stepped into their periphery.

“Ceci!” Tilly cried, negotiating herself to her feet. She waded toward Reno with her arms wide, as though rushing to embrace an old friend. Reno tightened his body posture and successfully negotiated the contact down to a strained kiss on each cheek. “My dear, you look stunning! The rest of us are downright underdressed by comparison.”

This was apparently what passed for ironic humor among the idle rich. Tilly and the rest of the room all looked like they had just come from attending the opera, with maybe a stopover at a funeral before hitting the clubs. Still, there was no denying he was the best-looking bitch in the room.

“Come; you have to meet our wonderful host…”

Nguyen had likewise gotten out of his seat, although he’d gone one further than Tilly and remembered to put his glass down before coming to greet them. He dipped his head as his employees had done and took Reno’s hand before he could object, miming a kiss just over his knuckles.

“Mx Toast, it is an honor to receive you in person,” he said, with the serene half-smile of a man who definitely ordered people’s deaths on the regular. “Forgive my presumption, but I believed your husband would be joining us.”

“I’m afraid he’s indisposed,” Reno said smoothly. “We just flew in from the Eastern Continent this morning and the poor dear’s still jetlagged.”

“‘Jetlagged,’” Tilly repeated with delight, clasping her hands together as well as her drink would allow. “You see, Nguyen? I was just saying how Ceci has a marvelous way of speaking.”

“Yes, you were,” Nguyen agreed patiently. He half-turned and indicated the couch behind him, where another seat had conveniently opened up right beside his. “Will you sit, Mx Toast?”

The dinner party was a rogue’s gallery of boring rich people. Besides the von Asturs there was Delilah Kaku, solar energy entrepreneur, whose ‘self-made’ wealth came mostly from her family’s beryl mines; Jacob Ransom, a steel manufacturer whose hobbies included depleting the wild populations of endangered creatures; and Ivory Formisque, a film actress so famous even Reno had heard of her. Within seconds of joining Nguyen on the couch, Ivory was bending Reno’s ear prattling about ‘harmful chemicals’ in the public water supply and ‘mind control’ vaccines distributed to school children. 

Reno craned his head to scan the group and snagged on a figure who was sitting slightly apart from the rest, not having been introduced yet. Older, maybe in his 60s, with a salt-and-pepper beard.

“Ah, yes,” Nguyen said without a hitch, noticing where Reno’s attention had gotten off to. “Mx Toast, if I may introduce Don Ladresco, an old associate of mine.”

Ladresco held a lacquered cane between his knees, hands folded on the seafoam-green jade handle. He offered a slight nod. “Charmed, my dear.”

Reno responded with an open smile, lifting his champagne glass. “And what is it you do, Mister Ladresco?”

If the old man was bothered about someone forgoing his usual title, he didn’t show it. “I suppose I’m a bit of a history buff.”

Gods, no one around here could be more obvious if they tried. Reno let the flow of conversation take its course, slowly finagling his way further and further down the couch until finally he and Ladresco were seated side-by-side.

“A historian, then?” he inquired casually, one slender leg crossing over the other with an inviting flash of thigh.

Ladresco eyes traveled shamelessly up and down Reno’s body. “More an investor, you could say,” he said, apparently liking what he saw. “I fund certain expeditions. Archaeological digs.”

Bingo. Reno widened his eyes, all vacuous curiosity and awe. “You dig up dinosaurs?” he asked, positively rapt with interest.

The old man barked out a laugh, his cheeks pink and ruddy. That was one upside to slowing one’s roll at parties: you could remain firmly in control while everyone around you gradually devolved into giggling morons.

“Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid!” Ladresco patted the back of Reno’s hand like he was speaking to a child. “You’re thinking of paleontology, my dear. _Archaeology_ concerns itself with human artifacts.” He slid closer to show Reno the detail on his cane’s handle, the delicately-carved jade figures only about an inch in height. “See this? It comes from a ceremonial stone found at the gravesite of Nobu, the fourth-century Wutaian emperor.”

Must suck, seeing your cultural sites pilfered while the ink on the unconditional surrender was still drying. Then again, robbing a few graves in the name of ‘history’ didn’t hold a candle to the shit Shinra Company did literally every day, some of it by Reno’s own hands. He was in the wrong business if he wanted to get fussy about a little war profiteering.

More important for the moment, Ladresco’s hand was creeping up his thigh and there was a big phallic object getting shoved in his face. There were social procedures to follow for that. Reno bit his lip, glancing up coquettishly to ask permission to touch. The old man nodded with a warm, paternal smile.

With fine-tuned shyness, Reno trailed tentative fingers over the handle, stroking ever-so-lightly along its length. The carvings weren’t the easiest to see under the lights, but he could make out several twisting figures, limbs entangled in orgiastic bliss. Which said _so_ much about Ladresco’s ‘tastes’ that Reno hardly even needed to continue this little mating dance, not that he could stop it now if he wanted to. And he didn’t really want to.

The Turk employee handbook discouraged sex with a target, mainly for health reasons. But the handbook guidelines hadn’t been written for horned-up, 20-something agents locked in stupid no-fap contests with their infuriating(ly handsome) partners. Meanwhile, his and Rude’s rules only banned ‘hookups,’ meaning strangers, and ‘dude we’re here specifically to befriend/rob/assassinate’ was clearly not a stranger. How could Reno _not_ waltz right through such an obvious loophole?

“How beautiful,” he murmured, rubbing the jade piece more suggestively. Ladresco’s hand was practically wedging itself between his legs now. “Do you have more like this?”

“Many,” Ladresco said, in what he probably thought was a purr but mostly sounded like an aroused garbage disposal. “You’ll see some of them this Wednesday, I imagine.”

Reno brought his lips together, gearing up for a sultry _‘I don’t suppose I could get a little sneak peek?’_ and the inevitable course the evening would take as soon as he said it. The adjourning to a room upstairs, the perfunctory blowjob, the underwhelming fuck, the broken look on Rude’s face when he learned what his partner had done to get ahead on the mission--

Reno’s ears tuned to the sound of glass breaking, somewhere outside the VIP section. He heard the clattering of dishes and cutlery, followed by the crack of a table getting upended.

And -- oh yes -- a lot of screaming.

“Oh dear,” Ladresco muttered beside Reno. “I was afraid of this.” He drew his cane back, planting it on the carpet to start rocking himself up onto his feet.

Reno hauled Ladresco back down before a spray of bullets gave him a severe haircut.

Around them, the rest of Nguyen’s dinner guests were in full panic mode. Whatever was happening on the other side of the sound partition, it was not the sort of class violence they generally signed up for.

“Nguyen!” bellowed Jacob Ransom, the steel tycoon. “What happened to your security?!”

“Please stay calm, everyone,” said Nguyen, who was evidently pretty shit at taking his own advice. “I’m sure Marcus has the situation well in hand. For now, I believe there should be a fire exit--”

As Nguyen led his guests at a crawl toward the rear of the room, Reno lingered behind. Crouching between two chaises, he lowered a hand to the back of his heel and slid open the hidden compartment there, drawing out a short, needle-like dagger. It wasn’t much, but if he could get up close to the shooters...

“Ceci!” an urgent voice hissed, accompanied by a tug at Reno’s arm. It was Tilly, who had apparently doubled back upon noticing their group was one short. Reno had just enough time to secret the dagger into his palm, out of sight. “Come on, you silly thing! Now’s the time for courage!”

 _‘Courage’_ was a funny word for escaping out the back of a restaurant on hands and knees, but Reno supposed in Tilly’s view of the world, anything grander than being frozen in terror was a decisive response to this situation. He allowed her to lead the way toward the back of the VIP section, ducking shards of glass and projectile shrimp as another spray of weapons fire cut through the air.

Ladresco was waiting by the emergency exit, leaning heavily on his cane with its precious jade handle. He held the door open as Tilly went through at a crouch and then motioned for Reno to follow.

“Where’s this let out?” Reno asked, having to shout to be heard over the gun patter and general chaos.

“Back alley! Just a straight shot down the service corridor.”

Yeah, there were definitely gonna be a few guys with guns waiting back there. Reno ducked through the door and straightened up, heading down the corridor at a purposeful fast-walk. Keeping Ladresco alive was obviously his top priority just now, but it didn’t mean shit if Nguyen or someone got sniped the moment they stepped outside. Reno glanced back just long enough to be sure Ladresco was hobbling along behind him and then doubled into a sprint, racing past Tilly and the others, the clack of his heels reverberating like silver hammers against the bare service corridor walls.

“Don’t rush! Don’t rush!” Ivory Fromisque chastised Reno as he passed her, like he was cutting in line. Ahead of them, Ransom and two of the waiters that had been serving the VIP room were clustered around Nguyen at the front of the pack, leaving no space to either side for Reno to slip through.

“There now!” Ivory said, sounding satisfied with herself as Reno switched tactics and dropped into stride next to her. She linked an arm through his, the drinks in her system apparently inspiring a burst of camaraderie with her fellow one-percenter. “Never fear, we’ll all be safe soon.”

“Uh-huh, yup.” Reno waited until the actress was leaning her weight onto him and faked a stumble, sweeping his foot out to catch Ivory’s shin as she staggered forward.

Ivory yelped, gripping his arm for support as she twisted and dropped. The sound of her distress worked its charm: the men ahead of them slowed and looked back, stuttering to a halt as they processed what they were seeing and horror swept over their expressions. Ransom and one of the waiters immediately started racing back toward Ivory to help her up.

Reno waited until everyone was entirely preoccupied with the spectacle and then slipped away toward the end of the hall. He reached the exit and flattened himself against the wall, waiting until the guests and Nguyen’s attention was squarely on Ivory to reach his hand over and twist the handle. He gave it a push.

The door swung open, hinges creaking in the damp night air.

Reno waited. Down the hall, Ivory had moved on to wailing about her swelling ankle. Ladresco, Kaku, and the von Asturs had caught up and were moving to join the huddle of ineffectual helpers.

At his shoulder, Reno picked up movement.

The first gunman to step through the opened doorway got a three-inch dagger in his carotid artery. The second got Reno’s heel to the small of his back, sending him sprawling over the oozing heap of the first guy.

Tan uniforms, red scarves. Why was it _always_ Avalanche these days? The Turks couldn’t sneeze without running into them lately.

Reno pulled a rifle off the second guy’s shoulder and flipped the safety. Ivory was almost back up now and once she was, everyone was going to have a lot of questions about the reclusive painter standing at the exit with a gun and a couple of bodies beside them. So, before that happened, Reno dove through the open emergency exit.

He hit the slick alley pavement in a roll. Inky darkness swallowed up his vision, only the spinning yellow streak of a street lamp overhead. A bullet pinged off the concrete where his shoulder had been a split second before; he returned fire before he’d even stopped rolling, squeezing off shots at the first hazy signs of movement.

One bullet caught a gunman in the thigh; the others went wide. Reno’s action-hero roll came to an abrupt halt as he collided with the side of a dumpster. He sat up, wobbly, greasy dark stains streaked over the delicate fabric of his dress, and ducked around a corner moments before his attackers’ fire caught up to him.

Reno tested the weight of his rifle. The clip felt close to empty, and by his best guess there were maybe four or five Avalanche members still bearing down on him. Behind him, bullets tore through the steel dumpster like tissue paper, whistling so close Reno could feel the air rippling in their wake.

Suddenly, all of this seemed like an incredibly stupid idea. What he wouldn’t give for a handful of electromag grenades right now. Or hell, just his regular truncheon and some decent shoes. Or even just…

There was a meaty thunk further down the alley. Then another. Then a scream, followed by the impact of a full-sized human getting flung like a rag doll into the side of the garbage bin, the force of the collision pushing the dumpster back on its wheels and nearly knocking Reno, still crouched behind it, flat on his face.

The alleyway fell silent, save for a soft gurgling noise.

Reno chanced a peek out of cover. Even with his eyes still adjusting to the dark, the faint lamplight gleaming off that shiny bald head told Reno everything he needed to know.

“Rule ten,” said Rude, tossing aside the last Avalanche gunman like a sodden garbage bag. “Till death do us part.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> -Alcohol use.  
> -Creepy old men.  
> -Public displays of affection.

# 2 (Sunday)

“...That’s the gist of it,” Reno concluded. “It’s all over the morning papers, police’ve shut down the Soluna, no one knows if the auction’s still happening, but we’ve got an ID on the seller.”

Tseng, who had remained obligingly silent throughout Reno’s explanation, drew a long, slow breath.

“I suppose I don’t need to remind you how idiotic your course of action was,” he said, when he’d apparently collected himself. “Going off without backup, without proper equipment, without _even telling your partner where you were going_ …”

Reno had had enough of this particular guilt trip from Rude already. “Look at it this way, boss: if I hadn’t been there, Rude woulda been the only one in the neighborhood when everything went down. Because somebody -- not that I’m naming any names -- said I oughta _stay home playing house_ while my sugar dumpling hubby-wubby did all the errands. So if you ask me--”

“I don’t believe I was,” Tseng said coldly. “You had no suit. No materia. No real weapons. All it would’ve taken was one stray bullet and this department would be redrawing its org chart. Please try to at least consider what you’ve put your partner through.”

Reno glanced sidelong at Rude, who as usual had been mostly silent throughout the call. It wasn’t a coincidence that Tseng kept saying _‘your partner’_ instead of using his name -- this was one of his favorite techniques when dressing down a subordinate. Company loyalty was a fine thing, but it was abstract. A coworker wasn’t.

“Me and him’ve already hashed this all out,” Reno told Tseng, which was true. There’d been a pretty big shouting match when they got back to the villa last night, leading to some satisfyingly violent kissing -- followed by a freezing midnight dip in the ocean to cool off. “It won’t happen again, yadda yadda. Nobody expected we’d have fucking Avalanche on our hands.”

“Yes, but unfortunately now we do. As a result, this operation has grown exponentially more complicated.”

Oh, here it was. The part where Tseng said they were dropping the undercover shit and flying over a special shipment of Reno’s gear, back to business, sorry about wasting all that time on corsets and wine-tasting etiquette--

“I’m assigning two additional agents,” said Tseng, while Reno’s heart sank. “Freyra is the closest; she should be wrapping up her mission in Corel within the next twenty-four hours, after which I’ll direct her to link up with you. As for the second agent…”

Reno groaned. “It’s Maur, isn’t it.”

He could almost hear Tseng shrug. “Yes, naturally.”

It made sense, insofar as committing four whole-ass operatives made any sense to begin with. Maur was a Costa del Sol native and former police detective; he knew the city like an old lover, or whatever vaguely creepy ‘romantic’ analogy he might use. He would’ve been a shoe-in for Rude’s position on this operation, if not for his rookie status within the department -- and the high chance the locals might ID him.

Well, nothing was keeping Maur from Turking in the shadows now. But that didn’t mean Reno had to like it. Maur was what you got when you took the standard Rude blueprint, stripped out all the good parts, crammed him down to half size, and permanently stapled a foot into his mouth. None of the women in the department ever wanted to partner with him, and it wasn’t hard to see why. He behaved himself a little better around Reno and what’s-xir-face, the nunchaku kid, but that wasn’t actually saying much.

Good luck explaining any of that on a call with the deputy director, though. Reno clicked his tongue and folded his arms over his chest, ignoring the inquiring glance from Rude while Tseng carried on with the briefing.

“What’s the current status on Nguyen and the auction guests?”

“Unharmed,” said Rude, taking over once it became apparent Reno was in too much of a Mood to reply. “Eyes on the ports say none of them have skipped town yet. No one wants to be the first to admit they’re spooked.”

“Good, then your mission today is a straight-forward one: placate them and ensure that Nguyen is looking into alternative venues. It so happens that a convention scheduled to take place this week at Regalia Resort has just been canceled and they have a suitable grand ballroom.”

Reno snorted. He wondered who they’d bumped to make that happen. Furries? A BDSM convention?

“You’re welcome,” Tseng added. “I’ll email building schematics within the hour. See to it that Shinra security presence in the area is minimal; we don’t want to risk Nguyen and his associates getting skittish. Are you both clear on your duties?”

“Yes, sir,” Rude and Reno intoned.

With the call over, Rude scooped his phone off the bed. Reno sighed, dropping into a chair beside the vanity.

“Great, so the whole cavalry is coming,” he ~~whined~~ groused. He unscrewed the cap on some liquid foundation and dabbed a bit onto the corner of a small sponge, resuming his work from before the call even though his heart was no longer in it. “Remind me to never do undercover shit again.”

“Thought you wanted a vacation,” said Rude, perched on the edge of Reno’s bed as he resumed fixing his shirt cuffs.

“Not like this! Sitting around playing dress-up while you guys are off fighting fucking eco-terrorists…”

“Everybody’s got their job.”

“Yeah, well, this job is shit.” Reno squinted at his reflection, the pasty splotches covering his face tattoos. “Next time, you’re the gorgeous billionaire and I’m the trophy husband.”

There was a little huff-chuckle, like Rude couldn’t believe Reno was already thinking about a _‘next time.’_ After a brief, thoughtful silence he answered, “You’d still be a twink.”

“Fuck off. There’s different categories of twink, all right?” Reno twisted in his chair, arms spread to indicate the airy white linen nonsense that Andrea had prepared for him today, with the flouncy high-waisted shorts and designer button-down. “When I’m the gold-digger, I’m doing this shit in leather jackets and thigh-highs.”

Rude appeared to consider this for a moment. “My cover’s not a gold-digger.”

“Oh, whatever.”

“He’s Ceci’s childhood friend. Marriage arranged by their parents,” Rude continued stubbornly, finishing the knot on his tie. He crooked an eyebrow at Reno. “Only dick Ceci’s ever known.”

It was _such_ a transparent ploy and unfortunately, 100% effective. Reno’s mood dissipated as his face split into a loose grin. “I don’t remember signing off on that.”

“Both families’re big on tradition. Ceci never even saw a man naked till their wedding night.”

“And lemme guess, he dropped trou for the first time and Ceci nearly fainted.”

“Not ‘nearly,’” Rude said, with a smirk.

“Bullshit. I’ve had your cock in my mouth, it’s not _that_ big.”

It was, in fact, that big. Reno had lost his voice for days the first time he’d tried drunkenly sticking it down his throat. Still one of his proudest moments.

Rude shrugged the self-assured shrug of a man who knew very well he had a penis that could break lesser mortals in half and finished pulling his suit jacket on. “You’re a pro. Ceci’s not. Roux made a big first impression.”

“Meaning he laid that pipe like a trans-oceanic cable.”

“You planning on going out like that?” Rude asked, jutting his chin in the direction of Reno’s half-painted face.

“Don’t change the subject, partner. We’re talking about how much you wanna see me dying on your dick.” Reno wondered what it would take to get real dirty talk from Rude, if discussing the sexual escapades of their married alter-egos wouldn’t do it. He took another look at his half-made face and groaned, tossing the make-up sponge to a far corner of the vanity. “Fuck it, I don’t care what Tseng says. Let’s just deal with Avalanche the old-fashioned way.”

“No,” Rude said, just a little too slowly. “We run this by the book. No dropping cover till we secure the target.”

Oh, was _that_ all? Reno perked up in his chair. Rude probably had no idea how big of a concession he’d just made. “Lucky for you,” he said, “I’ve been making some inroads there.”

* * *

“Ceci, dearest!” Tilly von Astur cried, sweeping Reno up in her great arms before he could deter her. “I’m so glad you’re all right!”

“‘Course,” Reno squeaked, wrapped too tight to even fidget.

“When we lost track of you, I feared the worst! But it was so late when Tully and I got back to our cottage, I didn’t want to call in case you were sleeping. How are you feeling? Any bruises?”

“Nope.” Besides the ones Tilly was giving him at the moment, anyway. “You know us Toasts… Good, solid country stock…” Reno twisted his head around in search of help, but Rude was still stranded in a sea of handshakes and business cards. Black pulsing spots spread across Reno’s vision as his compressed lungs clamored for air. “Yo, uh… you mind…?”

“Oh! Sweetheart, I’m so sorry!” The vise grip vanished, and Tilly managed to guide Reno into a squashy cushioned chair just before he collapsed into an oxygen-deprived pile of bones and expensive linen. “Wait right there! I’ll bring you something to nibble. The gravlax canapes here are simply divine.”

As Tilly drifted off toward the buffet, Reno rubbed at his side and scanned the room. Besides the von Asturs, this was largely a different crowd than last night’s dinner, though Reno recognized some of the faces from his dossiers: Edward Drizzle, Jacob Ransom’s business partner; Peony Koh, the billionaire ‘philanthropist,’ and her wife Adelaide; Phil Keyes, film producer. That last one was at the far end of the brunch deck hovering over Ivory Formisque, presently laid up on a chaise as she soaked up sympathy for her poor, twisted ankle.

No Ladresco, but Reno wasn’t sweating over that just yet. If Rude said none of the confirmed auction guests had skipped town, then they hadn’t skipped town. Besides, _Nguyen_ was here, mingling with a small consortium of business-types with all the levity of someone who had not just been crawling for his life from terrorist gunfire not 12 hours earlier.

Reno checked to be sure Tilly was still deeply engrossed in filling a china plate with finger foods and slipped out of his chair, sliding between two groups of B-list movie stars on a circuitous route toward Nguyen’s side of the room. He got less than a dozen steps before he felt a hand at the small of his back, and knew without glancing over his shoulder just which shiny-headed giant he’d find looming there.

And boy, could Rude loom when his partner was wearing flats. Reno rolled his eyes, but he straightened up and slowed his pace, allowing Rude to fall into step beside him.

“‘Till death do us part,’ huh?” he sighed, low enough that none of the other guests could overhear them. “Can’t believe you were serious about that.”

“I’m always serious,” said Rude, an all-time classic zinger. “Why don’t you introduce us?”

Well, Reno supposed they’d have to do that sometime anyway. Plus, with Rude at his side, people just instinctively slid out of their way instead of Reno having to squeeze between them, so that was nice.

Nguyen’s half-moon eyes lit on Reno when they were still several rows of business suit away from him, and he helpfully parted the rest of the sea, wading over to meet them halfway. “Mx Toast. Thank goodness,” he said, inclining his head. “I had my men searching all around the Soluna last night. I considered calling on you at your villa but--”

“But you didn’t want to wake me,” Reno finished for him. What weirdly specific cognitive dissonance these people suffered from. “Well, not to worry! As you can see, I’m all in one piece. Just thought I’d rush home into the sheltering arms of this handsome hunk of alpha male,” he added with a flourish, resting his head against Rude’s shoulder with simpering sweetness. Rude made a small grunt of discomfort in response.

“Ah, yes, Mister Toast, a pleasure to finally meet you.” Nguyen extended his hand, and Rude dutifully met it with the kind of firm handshake that could crush several small bones. “You’ll -- oh, ah -- you’ll forgive me if I confess you have me at a disadvantage.” Nguyen withdrew his hand and hid it, limp and defeated, in a trouser pocket. “When I reached out to Mx Toast about my little event, I admit I wasn’t aware they were married.”

“It was a small ceremony,” Rude said, with the exact same tone used on punks he was about to drop off a cliff. “We like our privacy.”

“But we were so intrigued by your invitation,” Reno chimed in brightly, deciding to steer things back from the edge. Probably Rude was just smelling the blood on Nguyen like Reno had last night and was reacting the way you were supposed to around that high of a threat level. That, or he had taken the ‘alpha male’ comment to heart. “Such a shame those _thugs_ had to show up when they did.”

“Yes. Although I understand Shinra has now sent in a few ‘thugs’ of their own to… aid and abet the situation,” Nguyen said, with a self-aware glance over his shoulder. As though Shinra PR were lying in wait ready to sue him for defamation. “Naturally, in light of current circumstances, I’m afraid the event can’t go ahead as planned.”

“Oh no! Surely the police will have the place cleared out by Wednesday?” Reno asked with wide-eyed concern, knowing full well that CSPD never moved that efficiently even when they weren’t mired in a jurisdictional dispute with an international megacorp’s private security forces. “What will you do? Are you looking into holding it someplace else?”

“I’m not sure,” Nguyen admitted. “A new venue is only half the problem. Many of the guests are understandably concerned for their safety. I know I was very much concerned for yours last night.”

“But I’m fine, and none of the others were injured. Right?”

“Yes, but… Forgive me, you weren’t here when we had another incident involving these extremists only a few months ago. I don’t particularly trust Shinra Company’s ability to contain this.”

A shitty take, in Reno’s estimation, considering Avalanche was _fucking everywhere_ lately, no matter how many bodies Shinra threw at the problem. Not to mention that Costa del Sol was, after all, a port city with a crime rate that could charitably be described as ‘astronomical.’ But taking a pro-company stance here was not going to do Reno any favors, so he made a show of worrying his bottom lip and nodding reluctantly.

“I’m also afraid that, due to the nature of our planned gathering, certain of my associates have merchandise they fear makes them a target,” Nguyen continued. That was almost definitely Ladresco. Reno, still leaning against Rude’s side, tugged subtly at the back hem of his jacket to flag this as something to follow up on. “So you see, security was already an issue for us, even before the city became a warzone.”

“‘Warzone’ seems kinda strong,” Reno said, before he could help himself. He reeled it in before Rude could get nervous. “Anyway, it seems to me the local police have everything well in hand, doncha think? It would be a shame for us to make the trip only to go back empty-handed.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose for someone unaccustomed to travel, this would come as quite the blow indeed. Let me assure you, Mx Toast, nothing has been canceled as of yet,” Nguyen told him with a soft smile. “After all, I haven’t even begun looking for a new venue.”

“In that case, Roux and I heard something on our ride over today that might interest y--”

“ _There_ you are, Nguyen!” a deep, feminine voice boomed. Reno glanced up to see a statuesque, middle-aged woman in truly impressive amounts of navy blue satin march into their periphery. Like Tilly, she had started her drinking early, half-drained champagne flute held aloft in a powerful fist. “Are you all safe and intact, my dear? When I think about what _happened_ I couldn’t help but appreciate what _foresight_ you had, asking me to include that additional exit. I told you _‘no, no, no, it’s excessive and ugly,’_ but to think it may have saved dozens of lives last night!”

“Miss Tuesti, an honor,” Nguyen said, with the same level, eternally-patient voice he seemed to use on everyone.

“‘Tuesti’?” Reno repeated.

“Hmm? Oh! I know what you’re thinking, my dear,” the battle-goddess of a woman said, turning slowly and gracefully as an aircraft carrier to gaze down upon Reno. “Rest assured my cousin is very much _alone_ in his affections for that _planet-poisoning, techno-fascist energy company_ he calls an employer. A black stain upon the family business, in my _humble_ opinion.”

“Miss Tuesti is an architect,” Nguyen supplied helpfully. “The lead designer of the Soluna, among her many other accomplishments.”

“Mabel, please!” the loud woman insisted, changing her glass to her left hand to extend her right in greeting. Reno wasn’t clear on whether she expected him to shake it or kiss it. He opted to shake and caught a brief flash of disapproval on Mabel Tuesti’s face, before it brightened into a billion gil smile again. “And may I say, darling, it’s simply _inspiring_ to find a fellow _Friend of Loki_ at one of these little gatherings.”

“Uh.” Reno racked his brains trying to remember which one Loki was. The wolf? Odin’s horse? If you didn't get materia named after you, you didn't tend to stick in the cultural memory. “Say again?”

“Oh, well, _you_ know,” Mabel intimated, despite the clear lack of recognition on Reno’s face. Mercifully, Nguyen and Rude were giving her the same look, which seemed to convince her some elaboration was due. She beamed at her fellow brunchers. “I myself am no stranger to _dalliances_ with the fairer sex, you know. I was quite the little feminist in my college days! Of course, one must adhere to certain _traditions_ for the furtherance of the family line, we all have our obligations, but as a Two on the Gast Scale, I like to think I’m particularly sensitive to the plight of _marginalized sexualities_ …”

Right. A ‘Friend of Loki.’ Reno fought to suppress the eyeroll. This was going to be a long few days.

* * *

# 3 (Monday)

Brunches became lunches became afternoon teas. Matinees at the theatre turned into salons full of poetry recitals and socialist theory, before transforming into soirees, dinners, and late night cocktails. Reno’s masochist of a liver cried out for mercy while he sipped watered-down wine and feigned interest in the unending torrent of bullshit streaming from people’s mouths.

It was almost a relief when, on Monday evening, after two straight days of nudging Nguyen toward the Regalia deal and playing nice with giant children, Reno finally found Ladresco again.

“Aren’t you a sight for these old eyes!” the gentleman exclaimed, cupping Reno’s cheek with a degree of presumed intimacy only Tilly could aspire to. Ladresco might not have even dared, if Rude weren’t at that moment halfway across the ballroom, getting mobbed by young heiresses. Something about the shaved head just seemed to turn women feral. “I do apologize for my absence, my dear; I had to see to some security matters.”

“Everything’s safe, I hope?” Reno asked innocently, fluttering his thick, dark eyelashes. “I was very much looking forward to seeing your… collection.”

Ladresco’s salt-and-pepper beard bristled with a crinkly smile. “Rest assured, my dear, you will see many lovely prizes from my recent expeditions this Wednesday. Nguyen tells me he’s secured a new venue… and that you may have had a thing or two to do with it.”

“Oh, I simply passed on the name of the resort; it was his diligence that got us the space,” Reno lied modestly.

“Well, it sounds like it’s much safer than the Soluna, at any rate. Small wonder he didn’t simply book the place from the start.”

Regalia Resort was by no stretch a more secure location than the Soluna Grand Hotel, but for one feature: it was closer to the shipping yards. That meant one of two things -- either Ladresco was happy to have a Shinra heliport close by, which didn’t seem likely, or he was storing his merchandise in one of the warehouses out by the docks.

Still a needle in a haystack, but better than a needle in a whole hayfield. Reno couldn’t wait to share this nugget of intel with Rude, ideally under the pretenses of whispering sweet nothings in his ear outside the powder room. But first--

Reno leaned closer, elbows resting on the narrow table as he placed his chin in his hands, the very image of a sweet, innocent ingenue. “Do we have to wait till Wednesday? Can’t you let me have a little sneak peek?”

Ladresco chuckled. “Now, that would hardly be fair to the other guests.”

“But isn’t it fairer to me, the buyer?” Reno put a bit extra bottom lip into his pout. “You have me _so_ interested in these artifacts, Mister Ladresco. I don’t know how I’m going to live if I don’t get my” -- a flash of pink as his tongue darted between his lips -- “ _hands_ on them.”

For a moment, Reno worried he had laid it on too thick. But Ladresco only simmered with delight and leaned closer, velvety red wine on his breath.

“You’re very beautiful, Mx Toast.” His fingers trailed down the curve of Reno’s shoulder to his elbow, over the beaded dark sleeves of his evening dress. “I notice you don’t wear a ring…”

That actually didn’t signify much, even among the aristocracy, but it was clear enough what Ladresco was getting at. Reno looked away, his eyes downcast, demure and soft and vulnerable. “Oh… I suppose I must have forgotten it today…”

“What could have inspired such forgetfulness, I wonder?” Ladresco’s hand was drifting down his side now, nails dragging lightly over the boning of his corset beneath precious black silk. It was one of Andrea’s outfits that Reno couldn’t get in or out of without assistance, and Ladresco certainly seemed eager to volunteer. “I hope I haven’t led you astray, Mx Toast.”

“Please, call me Ceci,” Reno said bashfully, with a carefully calibrated amount of breathlessness. Despite this being an utterly bog standard seduction, his heart seemed to be beating a little fast. He laid his hand over Ladresco’s where it came to rest at his hip, encouraging him to squeeze just a little bit tighter. “There’s so much I’d like you to show me, Mister Ladresco…”

The old man’s smile widened, showing off a row of orderly white teeth and one gold bicuspid. “Call me Giorno.”

“Giorno…”

“Excuse me,” came a deep voice just off to Reno’s left, sending a zigzag of electricity up the redhead’s spine. Reno let out a soft, involuntary gasp when a broad hand closed over his shoulder. “May I have this dance?”

Ladresco’s hand flew away from Reno’s hip so quickly, you would think he’d been burned. If he started to invent an excuse, Reno never heard it -- between one thud of his rabbiting pulse and the next he was being steered away from the table, escorted across the floor with a powerful arm wrapped around his shoulders.

“What the _hell_ , partner?” Reno hissed. The floor around them was opening up, mingling groups of guests giving way to dancing pairs as the band at the far end of the room struck up the first section of a new piece. “You run out of teen girls rubbing your head for good luck?”

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Rude muttered, not rising to the bait. He stopped and spun Reno around in his heels, capturing his partner’s hand in his, the other splayed over the small of his back. They were pressed almost chest-to-chest like this, Reno’s traitor heart banging out of rhythm against his breastbone. “That how they taught you to take down a target?”

Reno scoffed, his nails digging into Rude’s knuckles as he walked him back one, two steps, turning, spinning, the bandoneon whining out a sharp staccato. “That’s fucking rich, you getting proprietary at a time like this.”

“I’m thinking about the mission.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Reno demanded, still in a harsh whisper. “I was that fucking close to getting him to show me to his warehouse, and you--”

He broke off as Rude lifted his arm and guided him into a twirl, spinning him until they were pressed back to front, Rude’s hands spread possessively over his chest. It earned them a few murmurs from the crowd.

Rude lowered his head, nuzzling his cheek against the side of Reno’s throat to murmur in his ear. “If you’re that desperate, then just call it.”

Only many layers of professional-grade make-up prevented Reno from blushing as livid as his hair just then. “Fuck you, m’not calling it,” he hissed through his teeth. “You kept me going for two and a half years, _you_ call it.”

“I was giving you space,” said Rude, one hand sliding down to Reno’s waist as he guided the rock and twist of their hips. “You’re the one always rushing into things.”

 _Giving him space?_ Reno clenched his teeth; after all this time, Rude was still treating him like he was made of glass, wasn’t he? Like he was a _victim_.

“And you’re a coward,” Reno snapped. He reached up blindly to stroke a hand sensually down the side of his partner’s cheek, fingers trailing along his jaw. Not even breaking a sweat yet, the bastard. “Or what, you got some sorta kink for this? Seeing how long you can put it off?”

“Don’t you?” 

A kick, a spin, footwork. Tango looked sexy but it was the least erotic thing in the world to actually dance, all rigid posture and sharp tangling of limbs that bordered on violence. Reno waited for a break in the movement and then peeled out of Rude’s embrace, turning and extending an arm in a sultry come-hither gesture.

The dance floor had thinned out considerably, all the attention in the room narrowing down to the two of them as the song climbed toward a finale. Rude closed the space between them, hands sliding up the sides of Reno’s thighs before locking around his narrow waist.

“Me? Nah.” Reno walked his fingers up Rude’s broad arms, lacing his hands behind his neck again. “I’m more the ‘instant gratification’ type. And I _know_ you got a shorter fuse than you think you do.”

“Hn.” In answer, Rude bent his knees and lifted Reno into his arms, clear off his feet like raising a ballerina. He hooked a hand beneath Reno’s knee and went into a spin, a more elegant version of one of his old wrestling moves. Reno retaliated, getting his other leg around Rude’s waist and leaning his center of gravity back so that Rude was forced to slow and lower him into a dip, their bodies brought together in a borderline-indecent pose. A few scandalized gasps shot up among the onlookers.

Reno hooked a finger through Rude’s bow tie and drew him down closer till their noses almost touched, panted breath intermingling. This was many orders of magnitude more precarious than the dip Andrea had tried on him back in Midgar, the majority of their combined weight balanced on Rude’s bent knee. “You don’t like me bending the rules? Then take the L and call it. Show some fucking responsibi--”

Rude pressed their mouths together impatiently, just as the music hit its crescendo. Reno felt his eyes flutter shut of their own accord, the soft sound he made lost beneath a scattering of applause and his own pulse banging in his ears.

“Fffuck,” Reno gasped as the kiss broke, genuinely breathless this time. He clung hard to the sleeves of Rude’s dinner jacket, feeling dangerously lightheaded just then. All the blood in his body seemed to be pooling between his legs. “How are you so good at that?”

Rude flashed a smirk, and for the briefest moment he actually appeared his real age, a hot-blooded 24-year-old with that playful teenage wickedness not yet wrung out of him. “Practice,” he said.

“Fuck,” Reno repeated. He ran his hands up and down Rude’s arms, feeling the bulge of his biceps all taut and tense, recalling old sparring sessions and the deftness with which Rude could crush him into the mat. “What say we go back to our place and 'practice' that again?”

Rude shrugged, slowly unbending and righting them both. When Reno was back on his own feet again, he finger-combed his partner’s hair into some semblance of its former style. “You got what we came for?”

Reno decided he really liked Rude touching his hair. “Almost, if you’d let me go butter him up some more. I nearly had a location.”

“Make it quick, then.”

The band was embarking on a new dance number, a slow one neither Turk had any desire to take part in, so they used the natural ebb and flow of the crowd to circle their way back toward the far side of the ballroom. It was touch and go; every few feet they seemed to drift past some couple they had exchanged pleasantries with at a previous event and had to pause to do the regular social rituals. Ivory Formisque, trying to play nice, gave Reno a kiss on both cheeks with cold steel jealousy in her eyes; Jacob Ransom took a moment away from bickering with his business partner to slap Rude heartily on the back and offer him a glass of champagne. All very cordial and tedious. 

Finally, Reno got a line of sight on the narrow cocktail table where he had so recently been charming Giorno Ladresco. It was deserted, a telltale half-finished glass of bourbon left abandoned on a dainty napkin.

“Shit,” Reno muttered, letting his gaze drift past it lest he be caught staring. He returned a curt wave from Delilah Kaku and her girlfriend du jour, speaking out the side of his mouth to Rude. “You spooked him.”

Rude frowned, looking for a waiter to pass off the drink that had been non-consensually pressed into his hand. “Think he’ll run?” he asked quietly.

“Doubt it; he’s still hoping to get his dick wet this week.” Reno did another subtle visual pass of the room. Ladresco’s signature salt-and-pepper hair and very out-of-place straw hat were nowhere in evidence. “But tonight’s looking fucked.”

That was bad news, with the auction only a couple days away and local Avalanche movements not totally accounted for. They’d have to requisition another handful of security guys to watch the docks tonight; Freyra and Maur weren’t due in until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

“Hey there, honey,” a brassy swagger of a voice filtered up nearby. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Reno fixed a shit-eating smile and turned, prepared to make nice with whatever petit-bourgeois scumbag was addressing him now -- and instead found his expression dropping like a 10 ton weight had been affixed to both corners of his mouth.

There, seated slouched in a dining chair and surrounded by a small herd of young heirs of various genders, was a tall, lean man probably in his late 30s, with slicked-back, flaming orange hair and long sideburns, framing a square-jawed face. He wore bug-eyed dark ruby sunglasses and a midnight-black suit, a fat cigar held between two gloved fingers.

His expression fell about a microsecond after Reno’s did, complete recognition dawning. “Oh shit,” he mumbled. “Uh.” He looked left and right at his fawning young dinner companions, handing his cigar off to a blond fop with a passing resemblance to Rufus Shinra and his half-drained martini to a minor duchess. “Yeah, I gotta turn in early tonight, kids. It’s been real swell--”

“Hold it,” Reno ordered, and to his faint surprise the older man actually froze in place, halfway out of his chair. “What happened to ‘house arrest’?”

“Well, you know,” the man chattered, “a hotel is a _kind_ of house, right? It’s just like a lot of little houses stuck together--”

The minor duchess in her bright pink cupcake dress tugged at the man’s arm, pouting that someone had his attention and it wasn’t her. “Roberto! Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Reno’s eyes flared. “Oh, I’m sure ‘Roberto’ has told you all about his dear old friends, hasn’t he?”

“Uh,” said ‘Roberto.’ “Yeah! Friends. From work.”

The Rufus lookalike frowned, still clasping the man’s cigar like a maiden’s favor. “‘From work’?” he repeated.

“Oh, not just from work,” ‘Roberto’ babbled. “We, uh, _I_ got let go from that job, didn’t I, kid? For, uh.”

Rude, who seemed to have caught up to what was happening and who, exactly, they were looking at, suggested coldly: “Misconduct.”

“Right, all that, um, misconduct, with, uh, coworkers…”

The atmosphere around the table shifted, as the unspoken subtext ‘Roberto’ seemed to be implying sunk in for each of the young guests. A few of them shot envious glares toward Reno, who did not at all attempt to mask his snarl.

 _Fine._ If that was the cover story he wanted to use, Reno could think of far worse. The important thing was to get all three of them out of here in a hurry.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Reno announced, planting a hand on his hip. Beside him, Rude was simmering with palpable discomfort. “We misconducted all night long, didn’t we? Boy, just thinking about it’s got me all hot and bothered. What say we get a room and have a bit of three-way misconduct right now, eh, ‘Roberto’?”

“Um,” ‘Roberto’ managed.

* * *

He was called the Legendary Turk. But it was the type of legend people told to scare children into not going out in the woods at night, for fear of monsters or those monsters’ mothers coming down from the mountain to have a word with them.

By all accounts -- and no one below the deputy director had access to personnel files, so all of Reno’s information had come from older colleagues, all of whom were either dead or vegetables now -- the Legend was a rock-solid operative and demolitions expert. He had a confirmed kill record rivaling Veld’s and he was certified in every single Turk training module, including several he’d helped author.

The name, however, hadn’t come from any of that. It came from his _legendary fuck-up_ that resulted in his deactivation, the unmotivated slaying of a man he’d been assigned to protect. Why this had led to house arrest rather than liquidation, only Veld and probably Tseng knew. All of it had gone down within Reno’s first year with the Turks, so he’d only met the Legend in person maybe twice. He’d never trained with him, never worked a mission with him, didn’t even know his actual agent name.

And -- yes, OK -- they had flirted a bit, but that hardly meant anything. Rookie Reno had flirted with everyone, as a matter of policy.

“Now, before I go any further,” the Legend said, holding up his hands, “I just gotta know: didn’t you used to have tits?”

Rude successfully restrained his partner before any jaws got broken. It was probably for the best. This hallway near the bathrooms was presently deserted, but it wasn’t likely to stay that way.

“Okay, okay,” said the Legend, moving outside striking distance just to be on the safe side. “Touchy subject, I get it.”

“Why are you really here?” Rude asked, maintaining the full nelson around Reno’s shoulders while he calmed down. “Veld said you refused to reactivate.”

“Yeah, kinda,” the Legend admitted sheepishly. “He wouldn’t tell me the details. It just sounded like a bitch and a half, and I was really planning on working on my tan this week, so... Besides, by the looks of it, it wouldn't'a worked anyhow. You saw me in there; I'm a regular at these shindigs."

Reno snarled, but he was back in control now, at least. More or less. “And just what are you doing, spending your time hanging around a bunch of dipshit rich kids?”

The senior Turk made a wide, open-armed shrug. “Crowd skewed younger tonight, don’t mean I got a fetish for it. Speaking of which, is this thing still happening…?” He gestured between the two of them.

Hell with it, Reno decided. He was already furious about this whole situation, mad at Rude for spooking Ladresco, and salty about this stupid game of theirs dragging out so long. He was three inches from just straight up losing his mind and he might as well have fun with it.

“Yeah, sure, let's see whatcha got,” Reno said, stepping forward. Rude brought up an arm to hold him back and he tsked.

“The situation’s changed,” Rude told the Legend. “You heard the news about Avalanche?”

“Hard not to, with a coupla terror attacks in the space of a few months. Shinra’s sure falling down on the job, huh?”

“It means our current loadout isn’t going to cut it,” said Rude, the least sidetrackable man in all of human history. “We got backup on the way in, but if you know these people so well, why not lend us a hand?”

“Hmmmmmmm that’s a hard pass. Sorry, kid.”

Reno tried a different tack. Mind fraying or not, he could see what his partner was getting at. They really were short-handed, and having a toolset as replete as the Legend’s around and not using it was an awful waste of available resources. Anyway, Veld had said yes to outside consultants. “Fine, we won’t ask ya to reactivate, but you gotta at least help us out a little,” he said. “You owe us after almost blowing our cover in there.”

The Legend cringed, scratching at the bright ginger whiskers along his jaw. “I could maybe hook you up with a few contacts, sure,” he said. “Getcha some dock officials to zero in on the warehouse you’re looking for.”

“More than that,” said Reno.

“Well…” The older Turk sought around for something, grimacing at the ceiling. “Either of you kids got your advanced explosives cert?”

“Of course not,” Reno said, at the same time as Rude answered: “Yes.”

They exchanged a look.

“You got certified and you didn’t tell me?” Reno demanded, not sure why this of all things tonight felt like a betrayal.

“I was gonna make it a surprise,” Rude confessed. “For your birthday.”

“Wh--” Reno felt a blush creeping up to his ears, utterly bewildered. Like they were back on the dance floor and Rude was bending down to kiss him all over again. “What the hell, partner? You can’t just say shit like that in front of…!”

The Legend looked from one of them to the other, eyebrows lifting with a low _‘huh.'_

“Tell ya what, kids,” he said, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops, big snake’s-head belt buckle gleaming under the hallway lights. “One of you call a cab; we’ll do a quick stop over at my place and then I’ll teach you lovebirds how to make something _real_ flashy.”

* * *

Somehow, it ended up happening exactly how the Legend proposed. Once they got back to the villa, Rude and the elder Turk took over the kitchen, banishing Reno and his uncertified ass upstairs to get his beauty rest.

At a loss for anything else to do, Reno grudgingly complied. He got pretty far along with it -- washing all the product out of his hair and off his face, and making a respectable effort of peeling out of his clothes. But he hit a wall at the corset. No matter how he contorted his limbs, he just couldn’t seem to get at the laces on the back, and the boning was just too rigid to allow for much twisting or bending.

Finally, with a huff, Reno yanked on a pair of sleep shorts and headed downstairs, prepared to whine and caterwaul like a rutting tomcat till his husband came out of the kitchen to help him. But the place was empty, Rude’s and the Legend’s fancy arts and crafts stacked neatly in a fruit bowl on the counter like a bunch of shiny black pomegranates. All their tools had been packed up, and a small heap of stripped wires and peppercorn-sized granules of Firaga residue sat in a dustpan for the morning cleaning staff to take out.

Reno heard a laugh coming from the first floor patio and rolled his eyes. He headed out of the kitchen and through the living room, but stopped short of approaching the opened sliding glass doors when he heard the Legend’s voice say: “Let me ask you something: how have you not tapped that yet?”

There was a stifled throat-clearing from Rude, the slosh of a half-empty beer bottle. From his vantage point inside the villa, Reno could make out both men reclining in the patio’s deck chairs, gazing up at a three-quarter moon the color of saltpeter.

“It wouldn’t be professional,” Rude said.

“Pffff,” the Legend said, with a loose wave of his hand. He sounded a few drinks ahead of Rude. “What kinda excuse is that? You think anybody in the whole history of the department hasn’t blown off steam on an away mission somewhere?”

“That’s different. We’re partners.”

“It’s not different at all! Everybody bangs their partners.”

“‘Everybody,’” Rude repeated skeptically.

“Not everybody,” the Legend conceded. “I worked with some real dogs over the years. Literally, dogs -- they paired me with an akita at one point. But the hot and bipedal partners I fucked, and anyone can tell that boy is dying for it. Hell, you're _both_ so hard up for each other I can barely look at you. What in the world’s stopping ya?”

Rude heaved a sigh that he probably intended to sound irritated, but to Reno’s ears just sounded uncomfortable. “I don’t want to mess up what we have.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before, enough to know it’s bullshit. So what if you fuck things up? You just go and unfuck them again. I swear, kids today think they gotta get everything right on the first try.”

“Not sure I wanna hear something like that from you.”

“Hey, I’m a consummate professional,” said the Legend, spreading his hands. “The brass just don’t appreciate that sometimes the calls you gotta make aren’t the ones they want you making.”

“Think they call that ‘insubordination,’” Rude noted.

“Yeah, yeah, judge me all you want. I stand by what I did. And if Veld didn’t think I was right, why in the nine realms did he stick me here? That son of a bitch knows that someday he’s gonna come and reactivate me for real and I won’t have anything to say about it except _‘yes sir, where do you want the graves dug, sir.’_ No one ever leaves this job for good unless it’s in a casket. So until that day comes, I’m gonna soak up the sun and enjoy all the fine company I got around me, and I strongly suggest you do the same.”

“...It's not that easy.”

"It's the easiest thing in the world! Shiva's tits, do you know what the life expectancy is on this job?"

"Veld is--"

"The exception. Trust me on that. A lotta real talented agents ended up grease stains on the pavement while he was busy climbing the ranks." The Legend’s voice grew soberer for a moment. “You got no idea how dark this job can get. Okay? One day you’re gonna wake up and find the company’s got you doing something so dirty, you’ll never get your hands clean again. And everything you thought your life was gonna be, if you could just get around to it someday, it’s gonna fall out of reach. Contaminated. By _you_. So make a few good reckless decisions now, while you can still bounce back from it. You don’t wanna wind up with regrets.”

Rude fell silent. Not his usual variety; this was something icy and painful and hollow.

Finally he said, “That’s a big speech for trying to convince me to fuck a coworker.”

The Legend sputtered mid-drink. “Dammit! I’m not just talking about sex here. Do I really gotta spell it out for you?”

There was more, probably, but Reno found he had heard enough. He made his way quietly back upstairs without bothering to announce his presence. Maybe he could cut the corset with some scissors or something, or just go to bed in it. Whatever. He’d slept in worse. He just felt like being alone with his thoughts for a while.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> -Disordered eating.  
> -Violence.  
> -Brief slut-shaming.

# 4 (Tuesday)

When the knock came at his bedroom door just after midnight, Reno was not entirely surprised. 

“You win,” Rude said when Reno opened it. He leaned on the door frame with his tie loose and a hangdog expression on his face, smelling less of beer and more of sea salt and cigarettes, but that was nothing to complain about. “Just came by to tell you that.”

“‘Just’?”

“Not ‘just,’” Rude admitted, and without further preamble invited himself over the threshold.

Reno took a reflexive step back, heart leaping into his throat for a moment. He swallowed with effort, fiddling with a loose curl of hair as he turned his gaze elsewhere, but there was nothing else to look at in the darkened guest room.

“What, thought I’d wanna collect right away?” he managed, forcing a thin laugh. “Maybe I oughta send ya back to your room, let you stew in your juices awhile longer--”

“Enough,” said Rude. He slipped his glasses off, disappearing them into the same hidden pocket where -- Reno knew -- he also kept his slim silver cigarette case and a pair of brass knuckles _‘for emergencies.’_ “You know what we both want.”

Reno tried swallowing again, for all the good it did. He took another step back, and found that at some point Rude had already cornered him at the edge of the bed. “Hey, listen,” he said desperately. “I know what the old guy said, but you don’t gotta do this just because--”

“Two and a half years,” Rude repeated. “Remember?”

“Y, yeah, but…”

Rude grabbed Reno roughly by the hips and drew him crushingly against his chest, warm smoky breath brushing over his partner’s lips for a split-second before he claimed his mouth.

Reno moaned into the kiss, and all at once was almost bursting with barely-restrained laughter, waves of euphoria and vindication and electricity crackling over his skin as Rude tried to touch him everywhere at once. This was it, finally, no more games and half-assed edgeplay, they were going to check this one off the bucket list for real. Reno felt drunk, dizzy, tipping his head back as Rude’s lips went to his throat and powerful hands slid down to his ass and squeezed. His nipples ached, bare chest pressed against Rude’s solid clothed frame; the heat traveled down between his legs and gripped the core of his body, leaching the strength from his knees until they were buckling beneath him.

They got onto the bed somehow, and even in the darkness Reno found he could see Rude perfectly as he knelt over Reno, straddling him. He held his gaze as he peeled off his jacket and shirt, exposing hard, sculpted muscle; the spidery black lines of his in-progress tattoos stretched over deep bronze skin. 

This was more show-and-tell than Reno tended to go for in bed, but no matter how much he wanted to get his hands and mouth all over Rude’s gorgeous skin, something held him back, an invisible weight on his shoulders keeping him pinned to the mattress.

“Hang on -- hang on--”

Rude wasn’t slowing down the show. His hands were at his belt now, working open the buckle with his gloved hands. The room and Reno’s body seemed to be spinning in opposite directions, the inertial pull pressing his tongue against the back of his mouth. He fought against the mounting G-forces and finally managed to lift his hands to Rude’s fly, insisting on taking over the proceedings however he could. Reno pushed aside enough of Rude’s slacks to get at his briefs (leopard print, Reno noted dimly), his fingers ghosting shakily over the outline of his partner’s hard-on like it might scald to the touch.

Above him, Rude let out a small groan. “Come on,” he urged.

“Now who’s pushy,” Reno muttered, trying and failing to sound unconcerned. He got his fingers around the elastic waistband of Rude’s briefs and -- without further ceremony -- peeled them down and out of the way.

Beneath them, Rude was wearing another pair of briefs. These were hot pink.

Reno blinked at the sight, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” Rude asked.

“Uh,” said Reno. “Nothing.” Brow furrowing, he got his fingers around this second pair of briefs and tugged them out of the way as well.

There was another pair of briefs beneath. Polka dots.

“Are you fucking with me?” Reno demanded.

“What do you mean?”

Another pair of briefs. Cartoon alligators. Another pair. Tuxedo print with a little bow tie over the balls.

“What the fuck, Rude?!”

“You want me to do it?” Rude asked, sounding amused.

“No!” It was a matter of principle now. Reno began yanking the briefs down faster, flashing through countless patterns and materials, cotton and latex and (weirdly) lace, everything from superhero prints to girly bows and stupid novelty silk-screened stuff with text like _‘Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me, Mermaids Are Confused.’_ “What the hell, how much underwear did you fucking pack?”

“You can’t handle one piece of fabric?”

Another pair of briefs. Orange cats. Another pair. Bright red with the words _‘R U NASTY?’_ in white stencil. Another pair. Wutaian floral print. Another pair. Another. Between his legs, Reno’s aching cunt was drying up like a puddle on hot asphalt. Another pair of briefs. Fluffy baby chocobos. Another pair. Another. Another. Another. Another. Another--

* * *

Reno woke with a yell of outrage in his throat and a hand down the front of his shorts.

He blinked at the uniform beige of the guest room wall, just a few inches from his nose. Sometime overnight he had rolled over and spooned himself against it, free hand scratching at the paint like he was groping for the shoulder of a neglectful lover.

Groaning, Reno pushed away and rolled over onto his back. There was a light sheen of sweat going from his jaw all the way down to his stomach, a clammy chill creeping across his bare skin under the caress of the ceiling fan. By the light coming through the window, he guessed it was around dawn, if that. Even the hum of the ocean seemed far off, muted.

Belatedly, it occurred to Reno that he still had a hand shoved down his pants, fingers wedged in the swampy, sticky mess between his thighs. Wet enough to have been worked over two or three times by one of his more talented hookups, but missing that pleasant post-orgasmic soreness. His fingers brushed over his slit and he shuddered involuntarily, a spike of hot clenching _need_ shooting through his body, the ache of several days’ compounded neglect. His brain hadn’t even had the basic decency to get him off while he was under. What a total dick move.

“...Ugh.”

With painful reluctance, Reno slid his hand out of his shorts and wiped the mess off onto the fabric. As Rude-related wet dreams went, that was definitely one of the weirder ones, although nothing could ever beat _‘Snowman Rude and the solstice tree covered in penis ornaments.’_ He’d been hopped up on some _good_ shit when he’d had that dream…

Reno heard a chime from beside him on the nightstand, and looked over to see the front screen of his work PHS lit up with its sickly LED glow. He used the hand that had not until recently been fondling his junk to reach over and grab it. Probably a text from Tseng, he thought; some message to pass onto Rude, since he was so keen to treat him as the lead on this operation, and Reno like some fancy accessory hanging from his arm.

If so, Tseng was using way more kaomoji than he usually did:

“senpaiiiiiiiii ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆ come down and let me in!! 人(o´▽｀o)”

“For fuck’s sake, Freyra,” Reno muttered to the empty guest bedroom. He glanced toward the floor -- the scattered used clothes, the shredded remains of the corset he’d finally managed to cut off his body last night with the help of a pocket knife. He probably didn’t have time for a shower, did he?

* * *

There were three entrances to the villa. First was the main door, reached by a ‘rustic’ set of shallow wooden steps built into the easy side of del Sol’s southern cliffs. Second was the slightly-more-treacherous staircase leading to and from the villa’s private beach, a little alcove shielded on either side by sharp black rocks and home to some abysmally poor surfing conditions. Last was the servants’ entrance, reached by a back road and cut into the side of the cliffs, with double steel doors and a loading bay for caterers, or whatever sort of expensive deliveries the Shinras liked to make on holiday.

Freyra was standing outside the last of these, looking like she’d drank her weight in espresso and pulling off a salute so sharp it would have made Emma blush, if she weren’t doing it with her left arm. Her right one was in a sling.

“Freyra, what the fuck,” Reno said, standing in the door frame in a shabby assortment of readywear from brunches past. He hadn’t even bothered to fix his hair; whatever bedhead he’d woken up with was bound to be closer to his regular look than the chic asymmetrical nonsense Andrea had prescribed. “Did you just come straight from Corel?”

“Mm-hm!” Freyra said, beaming proudly. In addition to the sling, she sported a livid purple-black eye and a head bandage looped tightly around her skull just below her ponytail. Behind her, a scattering of beleaguered blue-uniformed security personnel were hauling cases of equipment up the cement steps. “When I got the call from Tseng, I decided to wrap things up ahead of schedule. Didn’t totally work out,” she admitted, her smile wavering for a moment, “but I got some _great_ data for Advanced Weapons out of it.”

“...You really asked for that railgun, didn’t you.”

“Oh, it was some kind of rocket launcher actually. But it shot spikes! Or it was supposed to.” Freyra took in the chaotic mess of her senior’s current appearance and put her lips together, poised to comment something she was almost sure to regret. She averted disaster at the last moment and asked instead, “Is Rude-senpai still asleep?”

Reno scrubbed at the back of his itching scalp. He’d taken a moment to wash his hands before heading downstairs, at least. “How the hell would I know,” he muttered, turning away from the door to admit her into the house. One of the security guards reached the door just before it shut in his face and managed to keep it propped open with a crate of shotgun ammo for a doorstop. Leaving the roadies to their work, Reno accompanied a bustling Freyra to the service elevator. “Where’s your worse half?” he asked.

“Maur was held up getting out of Midgar. He should be linking up with us in a few hours,” said Freyra, giving up the pretense of hiding her limp once the elevator doors slid shut and she could favor her left leg again. Honestly, had she packed all that gear and forgotten her healing materia? “I don’t… really want to work this mission with him, if I’m going to be honest, senpai.”

“Don’t be,” Reno advised, way too tired for this. “What do I look like to you, HR?”

Freyra straightened up, looking properly chastened for once. “I just thought, after the way he acted toward you at the solstice party…”

Reno waved a hand. A couple days ago, the prospect of Maur and his creepy ‘chivalry’ had seemed like the worst turn this mission could possibly take. But then last night had happened. And speaking of that…

The elevator opened into the villa kitchen filled with ruddy blood-orange light, the eastern windows looking out over golden gleaming water with the first fingers of the sun clawing over the horizon. The center island, which last night had served as a workbench for Rude’s extra credit bomb-making class, now hosted a full breakfast spread: plates piled high with steaming pancakes and sausage links; bowls of sliced fruit and cheese; a glass pot of fresh black coffee.

Oh, and the bowl of homebrewed explosives Reno had glimpsed last night, sitting amidst everything like a festive centerpiece.

Standing over the stovetop -- sans jacket, rumpled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a cutesy apron tied around his waist -- was the Legend, humming to himself as he flipped over a fluffy yellow omelette and chewed at the end of his cigar.

“Morning, kids,” he greeted with a friendly wave of his spatula. His red-tinted shades flashed with interest at Freyra. “Ooh, I haven’t met this one yet. What’s your name, honey?”

Freyra, to her immense credit, got over her surprise in a matter of seconds. Her bruised face lit up with fascination. “I’m--”

“You never saw him,” Reno interrupted quickly, jabbing a finger at the Legend. “He was never here, and he never said a word to you. Got it?”

“Um,” said Freyra, bunching her brow together. “Right.”

“C’mon, kid. The brass ain’t gonna liquidate her just for having breakfast.” The Legend tipped the omelette from its well-loved frying pan onto a beautiful white plate probably meant for serving lobster tail or something. He nudged a few dishes aside to make room for it on the island, somehow managing to avoid getting cigar ash everywhere. “Besides, nothing us old folks hate more than seein’ the young go hungry. Especially you there, shortstop. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

On cue, Reno’s traitor stomach made a loud, forlorn grumble. He gritted his teeth and ignored it, but Freyra was already sweeping past him, pulling up a stool and tittering with delight as the elder Turk helpfully filled her plate with five kinds of grease and protein.

“So you’re just crashing on our couch now?” Reno demanded, refusing to get distracted. If three days of being constantly surrounded by tiny hors d'oeuvres and expensive wines couldn’t convince him to have an appetite, he wasn’t about to lose to the Legend’s home cooking.

“Not at all,” the Legend breezed, helpfully cutting the sausage links into sections before depositing them on Freyra’s plate. She could manage a fork just fine in her left hand, but knives were right out at the moment. “I asked your man if I could grab one of the spare rooms.”

 _‘Your man.’_ Reno flashed back on the conversation he’d overheard last night, his frown deepening. _“I’m not just talking about sex,”_ the Legend had said. Well, what the hell else was there? Should they be applying for family housing or something? Reno tsked and slouched over to the kitchen island, pulling up a stool next to Freyra.

“You better clear out in a hurry,” he said, ignoring the plentiful spread and going for the coffee instead. “She’s got an entourage setting up downstairs.”

“Yeah, heard them rolling in. No worries; like you said, I was never here,” said the Legend, with a jazz-hands flourish. His black leather gloves were the same make as Rude’s, standard Turk issue. “Just came to drop off a little information anyway. About your warehouse friend.”

“Does he mean the target?” Freyra asked between bites of toast.

“He certainly does,” the Legend answered brightly. “But one of you oughta go grab the big guy first, so I don’t repeat mys-- oh, speak of the devil.”

Reno leaned back on his stool and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Rude emerge in the doorway, freshly showered and _completely buck-fucking-naked_ except a towel around his waist and another draped over his shoulders.

Reno swallowed down a scalding mouthful of black coffee, corners of his eyes watering. Beside him, Freyra made a small squeaking noise. 

“Freyra,” Rude said to the junior agent without bothering with a greeting, “where’s your healing materia?”

“Oh!” Freyra babbled, launching into a nervous explanation about mixed-up shipping manifests. 

Next to her, Reno’s soul continued its slow-motion exit from his body. It wasn’t that he’d never seen Rude shirtless before, but the sight of him now, glowing post-shower golden skin, little water droplets still clinging to his piercings and the strong line of his jaw, was sending Reno right back to the morning’s dream with all its vivid sensory details. His thighs clenched, knees brought together almost painfully, the sticky mess between his legs suddenly deafening to his ears no matter how still he tried to hold himself.

The Legend, who had at some point come around the corner of the kitchen island nearer to Reno, sniffed the exposed nape of his neck. “You could use some washing-up too,” he murmured near his ear, sending up a scattering of gooseflesh. “Restless dreams?”

“Quit sticking your nose where it ain’t wanted,” Reno muttered beneath his breath, unheard under Freyra’s excited recounting of her Corel mission and Rude’s concerned, monosyllabic mother-henning.

“Aha, so you did hear us last night.” The Legend slid an arm around Reno’s shoulders, in much the same way as Reno did to get under Alvis’s skin, with similar results. “I got some sage advice for you too, if you wanna hear it.”

Wouldn’t that be nice, some easy answers delivered to him on a silver platter? Too bad nothing the elder Turk said could get at the real heart of the problem, which was that Reno was a stubborn little shit with a penchant for self-sabotage.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

The Legend shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He released Reno’s shoulders just as Rude finished administering a healing spell on Freyra’s right arm. Because wearing materia earrings in the shower was not weird and excessive at all. She seemed happy to be able to attack her breakfast with both hands, anyway.

“So here’s what we know,” Freyra announced a few minutes later, when enough plates had been cleared away to make room for the wad of maps she had produced from her pocket. The top one showed the by-now-familiar layout of the Costa del Sol shipping district. “According to Reno-senpai, Giorno Ladresco stores his merchandise somewhere on these docks. Based on local intel, which, erm, I suppose you actually got from him” -- she inclined her head toward the man who was definitely not there and had definitely not just been feeding her -- “Tseng’s been able to track his goods to one or more of these buildings.”

The map showed a buckshot scattering of highlighted warehouses, some clustered on the west end nearest to Regalia Resort, but too many outside that zone to discount them out of hand. In all, it looked like 13 buildings -- way too many to go checking one-by-one if they wanted to avoid attention.

“We can rule out maybe half of these,” the Legend said, pointing to some of the outliers. “This whole row’s currently rented out to Gold Saucer Holdings Limited, nothing in there but funnel cake batter and frozen hot dogs. And this one’s full of stuff from Ladresco’s Wutai digs. You’re pretty sure the artifact came from Icicle, right?”

“Yeah. Chances of anybody finding Ancient shit in Wutai’s kinda remote,” Reno explained. “The ground’s not right for it. It doesn’t get preserved.” He looked around the kitchen island, seeing the others’ surprise. “Ladresco talked about it,” he said defensively. “What the fuck else do ya think I got going on, while you three are off doing real Turk shit? So yeah, the artifact oughta be in with whatever he just brought back from Icicle.”

“So that leaves this building, and this cluster here,” Freyra said, tapping a perfectly manicured nail on the grouping of highlighted warehouses on the west end. Even after the healing spell, she had traces of a bruise around her eye, but her nails and make-up were as on-point as ever. “That corroborates our Avalanche sightings in the area.”

“Shoulda just led with that,” said Reno, noticing for the first time the smaller crosses at several intersections she had marked in red. “All we hafta do is follow the rats.”

“How recent?” Rude asked Freyra.

“Fresh from the night watch down at the heliport,” she answered. Unlike Rude and Reno, she hadn’t needed to fly in as a civilian. “0030 and 0245, according to the security feed.”

The Legend checked his wristwatch, an overelaborate steel thing probably originally designed to withstand the vacuum of space. “Little past six now,” he said. “If I were a global eco-terrorist organization looking to steal Ancient relics right from under Shinra’s nose, I’d sure wanna do it before the morning shift change.”

That appeared to be all the counsel Rude needed. He nodded decisively. “Freyra. Go downstairs and gear up. Standard equipment,” he added, before her eyes could start gleaming again. “You need to make yourself scarce,” he said to the Legend, who shrugged. Finally, Rude turned to Reno. “And you ought to get ready.”

“If you don’t mind a bit of improvising,” Reno answered, already out of his seat. “Or ya think Freyra packed a spare suit?”

Turk uniforms only looked like ordinary businesswear; the material was so threaded through with tech that it was more like smart armor than clothing. And Tseng had made such a stink about him going into the field without proper gear last time, Reno was keen to do this shit right, even if it meant doing it in a pencil skirt. Never mind that he and Freyra were entirely different sizes. He could make it work. 

“I did bring some civilian clothes,” Freyra spoke up unhelpfully. “But I left them back at the heliport. I thought I might like to go and spend some time on the beach when all this is over.”

“Just wear whatever Ceci would,” Rude told him. “You’re still undercover.”

Reno paused midway through fixing his shirt cuffs. “What? No, I’m not going to some fucking brunch again, we got a job to do. You can’t drag me off to play married couple and leave the rookie on her own.”

“I’m not,” said Rude. “You’re going solo today. Gotta keep up appearances.”

 _“‘Appearances’?”_ Reno repeated, heat rising to his cheeks. This was absolutely not an argument he wanted to have while they had an audience, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He could feel the Legend’s gaze boring holes into his back while Freyra looked from one superior to the other in wide-eyed, puppyish distress. “Who gives a shit about the auction now? We got a location and we got Avalanche to intercept! Tseng said we can play this one how we want as long as it doesn’t blow back on the company.”

Rude shook his head. No one who was standing barefoot in a kitchen wearing only a towel had any business looking that composed. “You disappear now and that tips off Ladresco,” he said. “Keep him occupied. Freyra and I will handle the warehouse and link up with Maur.”

Reno’s stomach twisted, black coffee scraping at his emptied guts. He watched with a sort of numbness as Rude turned and headed for the stairs, off to go gear up, get fight-ready like he’d been itching to do for three days. 

“Hey!” Reno said to his partner’s retreating back, the spiraling hollow lines inked across his shoulders. “Rule ten!”

Rude paused at the foot of the stairs, sparing a glance toward Reno. His poker face was good, but not perfect. And what showed beneath it had the _rank audacity_ to look fucking _sorry_. “Game’s on hold, partner,” he said. “Time for work.”

* * *

He tried Ladresco at his hotel first, then used the international number printed on his business card. Neither call went anywhere.

Reno shuffled through the stack of invites from Nguyen’s assistant, looking for something with the day’s date. The idle rich didn’t exactly get together to plan the season’s social calendar, so there were a lot of overlapping events -- some specifically scheduled opposite of each other, because when you don’t have real problems in life that was how you channel aggression, apparently -- and only a few of them made any sense for Ladresco to be at. Reno doubted, for example, that the old man would be joining Ivory Formisque and the other movie types for jetskis at noon, but Ladresco might attend the afternoon poetry salon hosted by solar magnate Delilah Kaku, if only because they were the same variety of robber baron.

In the end, Reno rolled the dice on an engagement party for Jacob Ransom’s nephew aboard the steel tycoon’s private yacht. Fancy setting, free food, similar levels of bloodthirst -- it seemed as reasonable a bet as any. Reno arrived via motorboat just past 9, dressed in high-waisted white capris and a flowy asymmetrical top with some randomly-selected and gift-wrapped department store tchotchke under his arm for the happy couple.

“A toaster!” exclaimed the nephew upon unwrapping it, profound disappointment written so clearly on his face that no forceful politeness could mask it. “Why that’s… very… Thank you so much.”

“Hoho, I just got the joke,” Jacob Ransom announced proudly, nudging Reno in the ribs. “Well done, Mx Toast!”

Reno answered with a thin smile, already tuning the two men out to keep scanning the deck. No Ladresco in sight, but it was too early to call the party a bust. Reno offered the nephew and his fiance some rote congratulations and then grabbed a complementary mojito for the look of the thing, wending his way through the crowd.

Finding a quiet-ish table near the stern, Reno drew “Ceci’s” phone from his purse and tried Ladresco’s business number again. It rang six times before dumping him over to voicemail.

“Hi there, Mister Ladresco -- oh, I’m sorry, Giorno,” Reno fake-corrected himself, using the medium to play up his character more than usual. “It’s me, Ceci. I just wanted to call and apologize for disappearing last night. Roux is not usually so… possessive.” Reno fiddled with the long trailing hem of his top; today’s look showed less skin than he preferred, but at least it afforded him bare arms and an exposed midriff. “To be honest with you, I’m scared. Roux’s not a violent person, but when we got back to the villa last night, he, well…” Reno trailed off dramatically for a pregnant couple seconds. “I could really use a friendly face today, Giorno. Please call me back when you get this. I’ll be at Jacob’s nephew’s party until eleven if you’d like to stop by.”

Reno almost hung up on that, but a stroke of inspiration had him add, in a wounded, low voice: “I miss you.”

He clapped the phone shut, satisfied with a hook well-baited, and returned it to his purse with his work PHS and lipstick. Then he took a hard look at his mojito. Half its ice had already sweated out onto the tablecloth and its sprig of mint clung soggy and lifeless to the side of the glass, not quite as refreshing as it had looked on the waiter’s tray a few minutes ago.

If the game was off, or “on hold” or whatever, that meant he could throw caution to the wind and drink what he wanted again, right?

So why wasn’t he? Reno drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. The problem with that hushed _“I miss you”_ on the phone was that it had been sincere, in a way -- just not directed at Ladresco. At that very moment, Rude, Freyra, and possibly Maur were down in the shipping district having it out with terrorists and/or raiding Ladresco’s warehouse while pretending to _be_ said terrorists. Meanwhile Reno was just... hanging around. Forget his sex life; his _work_ life was calling to him and he’d been benched for no godsdamned reason.

A towering shadow suddenly spread over the table. Reno looked up, lifting his cats-eye sunglasses to make out the silhouette hovering over him.

“Ceci, dear,” said Tilly von Astur, with the affected lightness of someone who is Deeply Concerned. She was wearing her largest hat to date and an improbable volume of pearls. “I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help hearing a little of your call just now…”

Well, shit. Reno spread his hands with a bracing smile. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “Just some personal business.”

“I know you’re a very private person and I respect that,” Tilly said, gliding into the chair next to his and grasping one of his hands with her own. “But I consider you a dear friend, and not just for what you did for our Fropsie. If something is going on between you and Roux, well… I’d like to help in any way that I’m able. Please forgive my presumption.”

He had no intention of forgiving anything, but he really didn’t have any choice in the matter, did he? The fastest way to get her to leave was probably just to placate her: Reno worked to soften his expression, stiffly patting her hand. “Yeah nah, it’s really nothing. Just normal married couple stuff.”

“It didn’t sound that way to me. You and Roux have been partners for, what was it, only two and a half years now, is that right?”

Reno narrowly kept his eyebrow from shooting up. When over the past few days had he shared _that_ bit of information? Or maybe Rude had panicked and let it slip?

“That’s right,” he said tentatively. Making up something else at this stage would just invite more questions he didn’t want to answer. “But, uh, we knew each other before that,” he added, remembering the backstory Rude had given him. _“Childhood friend. Only dick Ceci’s ever known.”_ Reno cleared his throat. “Why?”

“It may mean nothing,” said Tilly, placing a hand over her heart in such a way that suggested it did, in fact, mean a great deal, “but Tully and I are celebrating thirty-two years together next month, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in all that time, it’s--”

Ohhh no. No no no. He was not going to sit around and get a lecture from some middle-aged rich lady on the Sacred Institution of Marriage. Reno started casting about for an exit, but on the other side of the deck Jacob Ransom had just embarked on a long, rambling tribute for his recently-engaged nephew, closing off most of Reno’s escape options.

“--trust, and most importantly, communication are key to any successful--”

“--a self-made millionaire by twenty-two,” Ransom was saying into the mic, with his hand on his nephew’s shoulder, “with only a _modest_ seed investment from yours truly--”

“--ask yourself what Roux is actually trying to accomplish with his behavior,” Tilly said, her voice cutting through the white noise of willful distraction, making up for its unwilling audience through sheer persistence. “It could be that in his own way he’s just trying to protect you, dearest.”

“I never asked him to,” Reno snapped without thinking.

Tilly’s smile fractured a little. “That’s love, I’m afraid,” she said, almost pityingly.

A small chill swept up Reno’s spine and down through his limbs. The old lady had no idea what she was saying, no _concept_ of just how far from the truth her understanding of the situation was, and yet--

“I know that it’s none of my business, if you choose to… pursue this endeavor with Don Ladresco,” Tilly continued. “Heavens know you’ve taken a shine to him these last few days, and who am I to judge matters of the heart?”

Reno squawked. “That’s really _not_ what--” He clamped his jaw shut before he could shove his foot any further down his throat. Too late: Tilly seized on it, leaning in closer with a fire in her usually colorless eyes.

“So it’s those museum pieces of his, then?” she pressed. “Giorno may talk up his collection, but everyone knows he could never actually sell them at any of Nguyen’s events.”

Around Reno, time seemed to slow. “Hang on,” he said. “What are you saying?”

“Oh, Ceci, _dearest._ You don’t know, because you never attend these functions. Giorno is… rather more of a hobbyist, you could say, than a genuine collector. Nguyen keeps him around for the sake of their friendship -- I understand they attended university together -- but he would never lower himself so far as to sell Giorno’s forgeries.”

“His fucking _what?_ ”

“Ceci!” Tilly gasped. She cast her gaze around their table, but most of the party guests were still focusing on Jacob Ransom on the mic, now rambling about his “personal contacts” that helped ensure his nephew could open his dog-grooming salon franchise in Wutai. “You know I enjoy your plainspokenness very much, but there are limits…”

“Ladresco’s selling forgeries,” Reno pushed.

“Well!” Tilly glanced around furtively again, lowering her voice even further. “I suppose one mustn’t give in to rumors, but at the very least he’s been known to pass off pieces of dubious provenance. I’m so sorry, dearest, I should have taken you aside about it that first evening at dinner, but then there was that dreadful attack, and you had seemed so taken with him…”

Cocksucking shitweasels. And he’d nearly slept with the guy!

Reno made to leave his chair, to storm off this fucking boat if he had to swim his way to shore, but Tilly’s grasp kept his hand pinned to the table. She wasn’t done, it seemed.

“I must confess, I was also a little jealous,” she said. Her pale eyes glistened with a thin layer of tears she was valiantly stiff-upper-lipping her way through. “If you had such an interest in Icicle artifacts, Ceci darling, I would have been happy to show you some of the pieces Tully and I were bringing. Even” -- her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper -- “a real Ancient tablet we had certified in Cosmo Canyon. Surely that’s better than some, some _smutty jade carvings_ owned by an emperor no one’s certain even existed?”

Mother _fucker_. Ladresco wasn’t the seller, Tilly von Astur was -- and she apparently had a crush on her chocobo-breeding pen pal Ceci, but that was the least surprising part of this onslaught of new information. Reno wrung his hand free from the old lady’s grip, shooting out of his seat; he had to get to Rude and the others right away, before they were caught out raiding the wrong warehouse, or worse, wandering into an Avalanche setup.

“Ceci?” Tilly fretted, as around them some of the party guests shifted uncomfortably and Jacob Ransom’s voice on the mic hitched mid-meandering. “Is everything all right?”

“That tablet,” Reno said numbly. “Can you show it to me now?”

“Oh -- I suppose I could arrange a viewing this afternoon, if you don’t mind a little drive outside the city--”

“Yeah, cool, text me about it.” Reno pressed a small pneumatic button on the underside of his purse, fixing the water-tight seal with a soft hiss. Just because he was undercover again didn’t mean he had to repeat Saturday’s mistake of not bringing adequate gear. “Think I’m gonna go for a swim.”

It was two kilometers at a straight shot from Ransom’s yacht to the shipping district. If he started now, and ignored the bitching from his shoulder muscles, he could get there in about 25 minutes.

That was all supposing there would still be anyone there when he reached the docks. But it wasn’t like he could call Rude and find out -- either he wouldn’t pick up, and Reno would have wasted precious time, or he would, and they’d end up arguing again. And Reno was fast coming around to the idea that maybe talking had been their problem all along.

“Is there a problem, Mx Toast?” Jacob Ransom asked from the bow of the boat, finally losing his concentration to continue singing his nephew's dubious praises. All eyes darted to Reno, now engaged in yanking off his earrings and sunglasses, kicking his low-heeled-but-still-impractical sandals beneath his chair. “Can the staff get you anything?”

Four straight days of playing nice and biting his tongue in response to useless questions had finally worn Reno to his limit. He snorted, pulling his flowy, sleeveless top free of his shoulders and exposing his new-and-improved chest to scandalized murmurs from Costa del Sol’s vacationing elite. Not quite the grand beachfront debut he’d hoped for, but a pretty good reaction.

“Yeah no, you keep doing what you’re doing, Jake,” he answered, slinging the waterproofed bag across his pale, narrow chest and climbing up on the portside railing. The chrome-polished steel scorched his bare feet, a fucking _revelation_ after a whole week of kicking around in prissy shoes and air-conditioned rooms when he should have been on his first real-ass vacation. “I just gotta go find my husband.”

Behind him, Tilly squealed a small _‘oh my,’_ sounding unduly pleased with herself.

* * *

Costa del Sol’s shipping district was as far from the glitz and glamour of its luxury downtown as it was from its sheezy low-rent boardwalk, a no-frills industrial district where steel shipping containers outnumbered humans by a ratio of about 10:1. Shinra security forces patrolled the eastern side of the docks nearest the heliport, but the west end was all mob-run, subject to cursory patrols from paid-off CSPD yes-men and the kind of black-suited muscleheads that made Turks look like mild-mannered salarymen by comparison. 

Reno wrung water from his white capris and swept the salty tangles of hair out of his face. He’d reached the docks near a little management shed in a blind corner, after climbing up barnacle-encrusted support beams and nearly upsetting a dire gull’s nest. He’d given himself exactly two minutes to collapse into a soggy heap on the platform and get his breath back, and then it had been time for work. 

First step: orientation.

The management shed was deserted and locked, but the bolts gave easily; just inside the door, Reno found a map of the district and a grainy black-and-white security feed, bars of static rolling up the screen as the video cycled through four high-angle views. Three of the views showed nothing of interest, but in one Reno caught sight of some movement in the corner, half-hidden behind two rows of crates: several rushing figures, bent low with something grasped to their chests. Rifles, no doubt. He hadn’t heard gunshots since landing, but the shipping district was a maze of same-y containers and few useful landmarks, ideal for playing the kind of cat-and-mouse games Avalanche was so fond of.

Reno tried out the security console beneath the video feed, but the controls were locked. Nothing he couldn’t bypass, but it would take time he didn’t have. Instead, he took another look at the video feed and quickly cross-referenced it with the map bolted beside the door. If his memory of Freyra’s map markings was right, that intersection where he’d spotted the armed figures was right near the cluster of warehouses Rude had been planning to hit first.

Second step: gearing up.

From the watertight purse, Reno retrieved a small tactical knife and a standard-issue 9mm, both filched from one of Freyra’s equipment crates before he’d left the villa earlier that morning. He held the knife point-down in his off hand and grasped the pistol grip with both, thumb off the safety as he toed open the loose shed door and popped out into the blind alley, shipping containers looming five units high on all sides.

Third step: find the party.

At first, Reno went off his mental map, slinking through gaps between rows and sight-checking every corner. But after a few minutes of this, he needn’t have bothered -- he could hear them now, the shuffle of many pairs of booted feet, the occasional pop of a rifle. As his surroundings changed from towers of containers to the corrugated steel siding of warehouses, the gunshots multiplied into a semi-automatic bursts, banging and reverberating against the hot metal and asphalt in intervals. Suppressive fire. Either they had Rude and Freyra pinned down, or they were trying really hard to make it happen.

When Reno caught sight of his first red beret, his excitement nearly overrode his training. It was a small fireteam of three gunmen, taking cover behind the next row of warehouses, where (if Reno’s mental map was right) Ladresco apparently stored the bulk of his dubious goods. Most pertinently, all three dudes had their backs to him, peeking around the corner like nervous prairie animals with their rifles held in white-knuckled grips.

Reno approached silently, tongue held between his teeth. The searing pavement cut right through the soles of his bare feet, burning needles through his flesh. Three meters away. Two.

He took the first guy out with the smooth edge of his knife, driven cleanly through his throat like a paddle through still water. The second he bashed in the temple with the butt of the knife’s handle, and the third he shot between the teeth, just as the man had begun to turn to investigate the noise.

As it turned out, skulls were not all that effective at sound dampening. Reno cringed as the 9mm’s discharge boomed against the steel walls on all sides of him, as before him the last ex-Avalanche became another gurgling pile of flesh at his feet.

“Well, shit,” he said to himself, hardly seeing a point to staying quiet now. He backed into a narrow gap between the buildings as a volley of shouts rose up three rows down. No time to hide the bodies, definitely no gear to take on what sounded like a whole fucking squad.

Reno reached behind his back and touched the bag slung across his chest, feeling the hard spherical shape of one of Rude’s and the Legend’s special “flashy” grenades he’d helped himself to at the breakfast table. Maybe, if he timed it right…

A cold voice near his ear: “Move.”

“Wh--”

The voice didn’t wait for Reno to comply. An arm snapped around from behind and snared him in a sudden headlock, his face shoved into a black wool sleeve. Immediately, the air beside his head exploded, a thundering, sharp crack, followed by another, and another. Six shots in rapid succession, ringing-screaming-clawing through Reno’s skull as just past the mouth of the alley four bodies burst into view and immediately tumbled to the concrete, each missing a chunk of their face.

The gunshot reports faded, leaving just the awful ringing in Reno’s ear. He struggled against the arm wrapped around his head and succeeded after several attempts to wrench himself free -- only for the person to shove the flat of their hand square into Reno’s back, staggering him forward. Reno’s toes caught on a gap in the pavement and he fell, twisting, scraping his bare palms and forearms against the rough cement with a loud, furious “Shit!”

“Shut up,” the voice instructed. “There’s more coming.”

Reno shielded his eyes to make out the silhouette emerging from the alley behind him. Asymmetrical black hair, a half-done and untucked shirt beneath a black suit jacket, one pistol hanging casually from his right hand with the other stuck into his waistband--

Ruluf.

“The hell are you doing here?” Reno demanded, slowly figuring out his limbs to get back on his feet. “Where’s Maur?”

The young Turk shrugged. “Couldn’t make it,” he said, arms folded over a lean, Y-shaped torso. “I’m his replacement.”

Ruluf was the opposite of Freyra; a Turk that Reno should have liked but just couldn’t. Part of it was the way he radiated I-want-to-fuck-you signals at Reno so strong they could be picked up from space, but that was true of 75% of the department, nothing too unusual.

No, the real issue was that prior to swearing up, Ruluf had worked for Don Corneo. Not inner circle material, but senior enough to've been a fly on the wall of many a clandestine meeting, which accounted for why Veld had taken such a shine to him. He'd shown up some time after Reno had left Wall Market for good, but either he'd heard about _'the bride that got away'_ from his buddies, or he could just smell the Sector 6 sewers stink on Reno, because not a week had gone by since his hire where Ruluf hadn't tried to out him to their fellow Turks as common slum trash.

“Forgot to get dressed today, senpai?” he drawled. Before Reno could retort, he was pulling off his standard-issue suit jacket and tossing it into his superior’s face. Beneath it, Ruluf wore decidedly non-regulation short sleeves, his curling scythe-like tattoos just peeking past the crisp white fabric over his biceps. “Heard you were undercover for this op; didn’t know it was as a stripper.”

Reno grit his teeth and yanked the jacket on over his clammy, half-dried skin. It was too wide in the shoulders and smelled like bottom-shelf whiskey, but it beat having no protection at all.

“Watch your mouth,” he said, for the sake of some small, token gesture of control. He could bark loud enough for any of the rookies to fall in line, but one-on-one he found he had very little leverage against Ruluf. Reno located his gun and knife where they had scattered and went into stance again, ready to rush the next corner if it got him out of this situation faster, but Ruluf got a hand on his shoulder and hauled him back behind him. “Hey!”

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” said Ruluf, chambering his pistol. “Just stay low and let me handle it.”

Reno snarled. “Listen, punk, I’m still your--”

The crack of Ruluf’s gun cut off the rest of what Reno might have said. He popped off three shots in quick succession, pistol held one-handed with a sideways grip that no amount of Turk training had succeeded in drilling out of him. Three more bodies hit the cement; a fourth flung herself behind stacked pallets of bricks and returned fire, forcing Ruluf and Reno to duck into the alley again.

“Rude’s with Freyra over on the next block,” Ruluf said, waiting for the Avalanche member to exhaust her clip before popping out of cover and putting two bullets through her chest. He listened for several agonizing seconds before emerging and crossing the intersection at a fast stride, forcing Reno to jog to stay behind him. “What’s here that’s worth three whole Turks in manpower anyway?”

Reno let Ruluf’s bad math go; he couldn’t rise to every petty backhanded insult or they’d never get anywhere. But he did _‘accidentally’_ kick Ruluf in his Achilles’s tendon and stagger him long enough to take out the Avalanche rifleman coming up on their right.

“Jack shit,” Reno answered nonchalantly, once the dude was safely eating pavement. “We’re on the wrong scent. And so’re these guys.”

Ruluf recovered from his limp, shooting Reno a venomous glance over his shoulder before advancing them toward the next row of warehouses. “What the hell’ve you been doing then, sitting on your ass for four days?”

“Me? Oh, nothing too important. Just got us intel that can wrap this shit up in a bow before sundown, that's all.”

Rude was right where Ruluf said he would be, although Freyra was not. They came up on his position from behind, diving into gaps between buildings until they reached the low barrier of industrial cable spools serving as his cover. Rude received them roughly as warmly as Reno might’ve expected.

“Why’re you here?” he rumbled, not of the rookie Turk with the rooster comb hair but his dear old partner. He had his right leg stretched out in front of him, black fabric wet and shiny with blood. “I told you to stay put.”

“Forget that! Holy shit, Rude,” Reno cried, already yanking free the bag worn across his chest so he could use the strap as a tourniquet. It wasn’t a great solution, but if Rude wasn’t using his healing materia on himself, it was because he was too drained to cast the spell, and that was a _lot_ of blood. Reno winced with sympathy as he pulled the strap tight and Rude let out a short, guttural groan of pain. “You numbskull, you mixed up your work slacks with your dress pants, didn’t you? No wonder the bullet went right through you…”

“I’m fine,” Rude ground out. “You’re in white.”

Reno looked down at his capris, still soggy from the swim and now more a melange of dirt and flecks of other people’s blood than properly white anymore. “So what?” he demanded. “I’ll wear white to the wedding too, bud. Just tell me the number of the truck that shot ya.”

Rude shook his head. “Already got ‘im. Worry about Freyra instead. I sent her ahead to outflank them, but then I lost contact.”

“Shit,” said Reno. So Rude was out of commission, they had a dumb, helpless rookie pinned down somewhere, and here Reno was, in a borrowed jacket and improvised tools, not much good to anybody. If he’d shipped out with Rude and Freyra that morning, this wouldn’t be happening. “I’ll grab her. What’s her vector?”

“You’re not going out there,” Rude said in faint disbelief, like Reno was taking this moment to crack an extremely unfunny joke.

“Ruluf’s in civvies and you’re not goin’ anywhere,” Reno countered. Never mind that Ruluf was only down to slacks and a camp shirt because Reno had his Turk jacket; it was still more body armor over vital areas than Ruluf could claim to have. “I can do this, partner. Just gimme a real fucking job for once.”

“You had a real job,” said Rude, too exasperated to argue the point further. “See the red building?”

Reno popped his head out of cover long enough to get a look at it, a red brick warehouse amidst a bunch of corrugated steel lean-tos, with a long, low wall running around the side toward a narrow alleyway. He ducked down before a burst of Avalanche gunfire took a huge hole out of the wall over their heads.

“Yeah.” He tossed down his knife; the CQC shit wasn’t going to do him much good over the next few minutes. “Rookie, how ‘bout a little covering fire?”

Ruluf snorted, but he drew out his second gun and cocked them both, ready to spring up at his superior’s signal.

In a half-crouch, Reno rolled his weight onto the balls of his feet. They were in bad shape; the hot pavement cut into his soles with every step, and a few of his nails had been torn while stumbling, bright red blood welling when he curled his toes. Next time he went undercover, he was insisting on a persona that wore steel-capped boots. 

Just as he was poised to raise the signal, Rude grabbed his partner’s arm. “Don’t do this,” he said, less like an order and more like a request. A plea. “I can’t heal you if you get caught out there.”

Reno tugged his arm free. “What’s the alternative? Wait and radio it in?”

The Shinra heliport was just a few klicks away; they could scramble a relief team and be out of here within 15 minutes if they really needed to bail. But if they did, they might as well kiss the whole mission goodbye. Even Tilly would get skittish hearing about a full-blown Shinra security raid in the shipping district.

Not to mention, Freyra probably didn’t have 15 minutes. Even Rude seemed to realize that, the faint shape of his eyes downcast and lifeless behind their shades.

“I’ll be right back,” Reno promised. Softer, maybe, than he usually let his voice go around other people. He cleared his throat before Ruluf could get a snide remark in. “Rookie, look after your senpai while I’m gone.”

The corner of Rude’s mouth curled upward with the ghost of a smile. All right, so maybe Reno _did_ like the word; sue him.

Behind them, Ruluf scoffed with unmasked disgust. “Just go already,” he said. Disrespectful little shit.

Reno bolted out of cover under the twinned _pop-pop-pop_ of Ruluf’s two pistols, back bent far forward as he barreled at a breakneck speed toward a gap in the next row of buildings. Twice, Avalanche bullets gouged warning streaks into the pavement just a hair’s breadth from Reno’s feet. He reached the alley at a lunge, diving into a roll and springing up again without any loss of momentum, then launching himself over scattered trash and broken crates to emerge, blinded, into the adjoining street.

“Senpai?!”

That was Freyra’s voice, sounding pretty close by. But stopping to scan for her wasn’t a wise move; Reno dove instead for the nearest open doorway, ducking inside moments before Avalanche burst-fire swiss-cheesed the wooden doorframe inches above his head.

As luck would have it, Freyra had had similar ideas. Reno found her crouched on the opposite side, her preferred shotgun held close to her chest with trembling arms. She looked pale and frazzled, casting her eyes to and fro frantically with every grumble of weapons fire. Reno got up beside her as quickly as he could manage, already checking the junior Turk for injuries.

“Is that Rude-senpai’s jacket?” she asked, sounding dazed. Blood loss or heat exhaustion was Reno’s guess, since he’d never known her to frighten like this on missions. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead because it seemed like the thing to do, but honestly he’d tapped out his available medical knowledge about five minutes ago. “Did you make up already?”

“We’re not fighting,” Reno muttered, the baldest lie he’d told all week. He pried the shotgun out of Freyra’s white-knuckled grasp, just to get it away from her for a bit. “Think you can walk?”

“I should…”

She needed his shoulder for support, but in the end she managed to get herself up on her feet, wobbly knees and all. Once upright, she seemed able to smooth her hair back into place and regain some semblance of her old poise.

“Thanks, senpai,” she said. Her eyes were already clearer and more lucid than they’d been a few minutes ago. “I’m so glad Rude-senpai changed his mind. We’re really outnumbered right now.”

“Rude didn’t change anything,” Reno answered. Far be it from him to shatter Freyra’s illusions that her senior officers were eternally-competent super-Turks, but he wasn’t in much of a mind to let Rude take credit for anything just then. He checked the barrel on her shotgun; one shell, plus whatever Freyra had stashed on her person. “Gimme your ammo. And stick behind me when we run.”

“You can’t take point like that,” Freyra protested.

“Clothes maketh man, but they don’t make Turks,” said Reno, eyeing down the barrel’s sight. “Remind me to tell ya about the time Rude an’ me fought a whole Icicle drug cartel in nothing but our socks.”

Granted, they’d gotten chewed out by Tseng that time too, but that was Tseng’s job, nagging and keeping company secrets. They wouldn’t have him any other way.

Freyra tittered, whatever images were playing in her head doing all the fortifying work of a fifth of whiskey. “I’ll take it,” she said, holding out her hand palm-up and steady. “Your aim’s awful with these things.”

“You can _aim_ with these?” Reno asked in wonder, only half-joking. He’d trained on them as much as any Turk, but to Reno’s mind all shotguns had the range and accuracy of a blunderbuss. Grudgingly, he handed Freyra’s weapon back to its rightful owner and drew out his pistol again instead. “All right, no more banter. On three--”

They made it across the street intact, only a scattering of bullets dusting debris around their ankles as they reached the mouth of the alleyway. From there, the situation devolved: in the alley, no less than five Avalanche riflemen were waiting for them, weapons trained at hip level as they sprayed an indiscriminate line of fire. Reno and Freyra dove for the pavement; from her belly, Freyra returned fire, pea-sized buckshot tearing through crate and dumpster and human flesh with ease. Two of the riflemen went down, red patches spreading across their tan uniforms, and Reno yanked Freyra out of line of sight before the three still standing could pick her off.

“That way’s no good,” Reno said, while Freyra popped open the barrel on her shotgun and dumped the spent cartridges, slotting two fat single-shot slugs in their place. “Let’s head up and double back.”

“I can get them,” Freyra insisted, that gleam back in her eyes again, as if it never left. “Just three rounds and we’ll be home free.”

Right. Three rounds on a two-round gun. “Anybody ever tell you you’re cocky?” Reno asked.

Freyra gave her superior a winning, bright-white grin. “Learned it from the best.”

“Lies and slander.” But hell, why not? If they sprang on them now, she could get both shots off in under a second, and that left just one guy for Reno to pick off at his leisure. “All right, sis. Let’s play it your way.”

They didn’t get the opportunity. In the next moment, the patch of building next to Reno vaporized into twists of shrapnel, a deep bellowing roar tearing through the air as heat sizzled bare skin and blackened the pavement. Reno dove instantly to the side, tackling Freyra to the concrete, their guns forgotten beneath them as a shower of superheated cement chunks and burning metal rained down over Reno’s back. 

_Not flashy. Not one of ours,_ Reno thought wildly, as debris pinged mostly-harmlessly off the reinforced threading of Ruluf’s jacket. Flecks of hot metal got into his hair and down the nape of his neck beneath his collar, dragging needle-like burns down his skin. He shook his hair free as much as he could and began hauling himself to his feet, with Freyra with him, struggling for balance through the sharp ringing filling his head.

Freyra’s mouth was moving, but her voice was coming from far away, like the far side of a tunnel. She had her shotgun in her arms again, her expression under the layer of soot and cement dust drawn together in vindictive anger.

“Not that way!” Reno tried yelling after her, as she stormed in the direction of the blast. Even his own voice sounded clouded, underwater. He reached for her shoulder and fumbled, slipped; he raced after her, grabbing her by the arm, and managed finally to shove her down to her knees just shy of the enemy’s firing range -- but not before staggering into it himself.

The jacket stopped most of the bullets. But not all of them.


	5. the one with the sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> -Medical scenes (including needles, IVs, etc) that haven't been factchecked because I felt bad asking my nurse friends at a time like this.  
> -Sex-shaming/whorephobic language.  
> -Unprotected PIV sex.  
> -The sex is kinda painful but also Reno likes it that way?? Maybe???
> 
> ~*~*~*~ENJOY~*~*~*~

# -1635 (Tuesday)

He drifted in a black ocean of synaptic noise, weightless and infinitely falling. At times he surfaced, hot static clawing at his temples, disembodied sounds that only occasionally resolved into words. _Transfusion. Sepsis._ He rose and sank again.

Then all at once he became aware of something tearing at his eyelids, ripping skin and lash apart in a bleeding swell of cold blue light. He lifted a hand to rub the obstruction away but countless bony fingers were pressing down on his metacarpals, fingers that were ropes, plastic tubing coiled snakelike up and down his arm. He flexed his fingers back and felt the metal hornet’s stinger digging deeper between his knuckles, the tug of sutures beneath sweat-sticky bandages.

“Yes,” said a voice, in response to a question he hadn’t asked, floating somewhere near his feet. “Please let the director know they’ve regained consciousness.”

He couldn’t help but feel that was overstating things a little. But when he tried to open his mouth all it held was sawdust.

“Good morning, [REDACTED],” said the voice, closer now, a dark shape blotting out the holes of light tunneling through his skull. “That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Nn,” he said, a noiseless wheeze. He tried flexing his fingers again, and felt a warm, callused hand close over his. Not callused. Gloved.

“Better to leave that be.” A voice like rain pelting on a vinyl umbrella, long dark hair, a gray brick phone. “I’ve summoned the nurse, so just lie still for now.” A whisper of expensive fabric. “Allow me to clean your eyes for you.”

He flinched when he felt pressure on his eyelids, immediately jerked his head away. But the tight corner of the cold, wetted handkerchief was persistent, dragging over the gummed-up seams of his eyelids until little by little the tiny pinlights of his vision expanded into watery, diffuse shapes, glowing as if lit from within. The glare became intense and he clamped his eyes shut again, thin streams of tears washing away grit and debris.

“Ah. Yes.” The gloved hand and the handkerchief went away. “I suppose your eyes are sensitive to the light. It’s been almost a week since you’ve used them.”

The cold steel fire waned, became muted browns and grays; still painful, but tolerable. He tried his eyes again.

He was lying in a cocoon of white sheets and tubing, the weight on the back of his hand a criss-crossed assortment of IVs leading off the edges of the bed. The voice, the man in the dark suit, stood over him, his long black hair glossy and smooth.

“My name is Tseng,” said the man. “I represent a certain organization within the Shinra Electric Power Company.”

Pigs. Cocksucking opportunists, feasting on the lives Wall Market ground up and spat out.

“Get out.” Voice thick like tar, sticking to the walls of his throat. He swallowed, and the sounds came a little easier. “Fuck you.”

“Yes, we get that a lot,” Tseng said, without batting an eye. “But please hear me out before you rush to judgment, [REDACTED].”

“Don’t… call me that.”

Tseng dipped his head obligingly. “I apologize. How should I address you?”

The dark ocean of static was starting to feel very inviting just then. His eyes rolled, dried and scratched in their skull. “What does it matter?”

“I’ve given you my name.”

“Didn’t ask for it.”

“I’m afraid you still don’t understand your situation here,” said Tseng, placing a gloved hand on the safety rail girding his bed. “This facility, your treatment -- all of it is being paid for by Shinra Company, which has a vested interest in recruiting talented individuals such as yourself. I understand you once [REDACTED]?”

Memory like a hot stove. He flinched and turned away from it, threw it back into the dark.

“...Long time ago,” he said. “Washed out with the first round of applicants.”

Tseng offered a brief smile, equal parts smug and sincere. “In some ways you’re fortunate.”

“Don’t pretend you know shit about me.”

“You were born in Muspelheim to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. You ran away from home at the age of [REDACTED] intending to [REDACTED], but when you failed the examinations you fell in with Wall Market’s personages of the night and found work as an entertainer instead. Am I right so far?”

“...Just say ‘whore.’” Everyone else did.

“Are you familiar with the Turks?”

Shadow men. Ratfuckers. The grease that kept the wheels of Midgar turning. Of course he’d heard of them. 

“You got the wrong guy… I just fuck people for money.”

“And survive a gauntlet of Don Corneo’s enforcers and sewer pets, barefoot and completely unarmed. We’re still at a loss to understand how you managed that one.”

His fingers twitched at his sides. The smell of it came back to him, rot and shit and sulfur. He felt the coarse yellow teeth peeling his arm open like an orange. There was no big secret to his escape. He had just run and run and run until he was out of sewer.

“If I tell you,” he said, “will you leave?”

“Yes. For today, at least.”

“What about for good?”

“Suppose that I did that,” Tseng said, canting his head to the side. “Where would you go when you left this hospital? Back to Wall Market, living five to a room over a dry cleaner’s, all the don’s men prowling the streets trying to find you? Or to some other corner of the slums, no money, no clothes, no friends to take you in? Perhaps back to Muspelheim, to live with your parents?”

Back home, called by the wrong name. A failure, a reject, used goods. Mom’s eyes shiny like a summer street after the rain, just so happy to have her baby back, her precious china doll.

“...You shoulda left me in that gutter.”

“If you truly felt that way, you’d never have run from the don. I’m offering you a new life. It may not be the one you wanted, but it’s not without its perks. And, I’d argue, a much better use of your talents than separating lonely salarymen from their money.”

“I dunno. I’m real good at that.”

“I don’t doubt. But not many sex workers can also bash an enforcer’s skull open and bruteforce their way through three different security systems. Oh yes,” Tseng added, upon seeing his reaction, “I told you that we were investigating. That was quite the path of destruction you left in your wake.”

“They deserved it.”

“I’m inclined to agree. The point is that yours is an exceedingly rare skillset. Even if you turned down my offer, others will come looking for you. To recruit, or to fight -- or perhaps to hand over to the don for a reward, if he decides his pride has been wounded enough.”

“...Suppose I say yes. What happens to who I was?”

“Gone. Erased. Your records are sealed and expunged. The Wall Market legend of _‘the bride that got away’_ will live on for a while, but only until the locals find there’s nothing to prove that you ever existed.”

“And my name?”

“I see no reason you should hold onto it, if you don’t care for it anyway.”

* * *

# 4 (Tuesday)

Reno opened his eyes.

He was on a bed again, facing a wall. This wasn’t the neutral beige of the villa’s guest bedroom, though; the paint here was a sickly, medicinal green, scuffed and flaking off in places to reveal the many layers of paint and wallpaper that lay beneath it.

There was the faint scent of chlorine over everything: the floors, the sheets, the sterilized tray with its small pile of bloody discarded gauze. Cheap bleach and isopropyl. Every tiny breath made Reno’s vision swim.

This was a Shinra infirmary. You learned to recognize them after being inside them often enough. It was a cramped, hastily-retrofitted thing, with exposed ducts bulging from the walls in places like spilled guts; just a row of beds and some ratty privacy curtains. It had to be the heliport infirmary at the far end of the shipping district, which meant--

Shit. Reno folded an arm beneath his side and tried to push himself upright, a deep wriggle of pain clawing through his ribs. His breathing hitched, lungs hooked on something, and he collapsed on the thin mattress again, a wet cough shaking his entire body.

“Guess you’re awake,” drawled a disinterested voice behind his back, seated in a shitty fold-out chair beside the bed. “Don’t move. They got all the shrapnel out but the sutures are just for holding you together while the doctor finds her materia.”

Reno didn’t manage to parse more than half of those words, but he did succeed at twisting his head back to look over his shoulder, to confirm it was, in fact, Ruluf sitting at his bedside engrossed in some guard’s magazine.

“Watching over me? I’m touched.” His voice came out as a strained, hoarse whisper.

Ruluf flicked a contemptuous gaze toward his superior and then back to his article. “Not my idea. Rude-senpai wanted to do it but he needed a transfusion.”

The memories rushed back to Reno so quickly he flinched. Rude, shot through the leg. The hasty, probably-useless tourniquet. Reno telling him he’d be right back, and then--

“Freyra?”

“She’s fine,” said Ruluf, flipping a page. “No thanks to you.”

Reno looked away with a scoff. It was starting to hurt, twisting his head around like that, and it wasn’t like Ruluf was giving him much reason to keep engaging anyway. 

What had happened? Reno could remember being shot, and hitting the concrete… Freyra had yelled something, and then there had been another explosion, and… fireworks?

“Didja see anybody else there during the extraction?” Reno hazarded, knowing this wasn’t likely to get him anywhere. “Ginger hair, sunglasses?”

“You mean the old guy,” Ruluf said dryly. “The one we’re not supposed to know about.”

“...Yeah.”

“Never saw ‘im. Definitely didn’t see him clear a path for Freyra to drag your ass back behind cover.” Another rasp of a page turning. “Didn’t see Rude toss a grenade that looked just like the ones the old guy used, neither.”

Ruluf could be an OK rookie sometimes, Reno conceded to himself.

“What I still don’t get,” Ruluf continued, apparently determined to have his superior revise this faint praise, “is why Rude-senpai stuck me with this gig, when you’ve already got a fangirl.”

“Senpai musta saw your hidden potential.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, to shut up for five seconds. Told him it was a long shot, but that Rude, y’know. He really believes in you.”

Ruluf’s lip curled. “Basic whore.”

Reno sighed. Kids today, no artistry to their setups. “Yeah, you got me,” he said. “Wasn’t even one of those fancy whores. What do you care? You weren’t even there.”

“I was,” said Ruluf. “Can’t blame ya for not remembering me, seeing as you spent most of your time in those days on your back.”

“So your sad, neglected dick decided to hold a grudge. Poor baby.”

No answer to that one. Ruluf turned a magazine page more sharply than strictly necessary.

“Someone like you,” he said coldly, “doesn’t belong in the Turks.”

That might be true, Reno allowed. It certainly wasn’t very Turklike to let a mission go this far south so quickly. If he’d just stuck in his lane and let Rude call the shots…

There was a rattle of metal from the far end of the room, as the infirmary door slid open. Reno craned to see over his shoulder and caught sight of a squat woman with chunky glasses and a severe bun, just before she started shouting at him.

“Stay put!” she ordered. “You have two broken ribs and nine open incisions in your chest, for heaven’s sake. _You_ were supposed to notify me,” she added to Ruluf, as he fled from the chair next to Reno’s bed, bound for the exit. “Turks! None of you can follow simple instructions.”

Reno’s attention was diverted by a larger, one could say _looming_ , figure coming up behind the doctor. His heart swelled.

“Ru--!” The name crumpled like brittle tissue in Reno’s chest, a wracking, wet cough forcing him back down onto the bed just when he tried to launch off it. Icy spots of pain spread over his back. 

The doctor raced over, a firm hand on Reno’s shoulder as she held him down on his side, pressed into the hard mattress. She snapped open the button clasps to Reno’s hospital gown to assess the small rosettes of blood appearing through his bandages.

“Now look what you’ve done to yourself, you’ve popped the temp sutures,” the doctor fussed, drawing a deep green orb from her lab coat pocket. “If you have scars at the end of this, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

* * *

Once the healing spell finished, Reno was up and ready to go. The doctor quickly pushed him straight back into bed with orders to rest overnight.

“Just because your incisions have closed doesn’t mean your body’s stopped healing.” She added to Rude, as he was settling into the fold-out chair next to Reno’s bed: “And you, stop moving until that bag is empty.”

Rude shrugged, dragging his IV stand over like a makeshift cane. He was dressed in his work shirt -- the sleeves rolled and the top button undone, necktie nowhere to be found -- and what looked like spare security personnel trousers, still with the factory-fresh creases. The IV was taped to the inside of his left arm, its long thin tubing leading from a half-full blood bag.

“Got nowhere to be now,” he said, getting comfortable in his chair. “You’re dismissed.”

The doctor’s mouth dropped open. She tried several times to form her lips around words, failed, and snapped her jaw shut. 

Reno cackled at her retreating back, kicking his feet in the air. “Daaaamn, Rude! Ice cold!”

“She was treating you like a kid,” Rude said, as if to justify himself.

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s -- oooof,” Reno broke off into a groan, low-burning fire shooting up and down his side when he pushed himself up onto his elbows too quickly. He sank down into the bed again. “Let’s… not tell Tseng about this one.”

“Too late,” Rude said grimly.

“Well, shit.”

“I told him that in your defense, some of those bullets woulda got through even with a full suit.”

“Thanks, I think. Ugh.” Reno lolled his head back, sighing. “So is that it? Are we pulling out? Mission over?”

“Not yet. But you’re done.”

“What, just because I left my post--”

“I’m not mad you came,” Rude interrupted. “I knew you’d come. I’m mad you got yourself hurt.”

Reno fell silent, picking sullenly at the tape over his saline IV. That exchange with Tilly this morning was still buzzing in the back of his mind: _“He’s just trying to protect you” -- “I didn’t ask him to” -- “That’s love, I’m afraid.”_

 _Bullshit,_ Reno thought, tamping that down again.

“Ladresco doesn’t have the artifact,” he said abruptly. “It’s Tilly. She’s keeping it at whatever mansion she’s got outside of town. I went to the docks to tell you--”

“Who?”

“Mathilda von Astur. Hat lady. Gross pet. The mission’s not a wash as long as we can get to her, right? How long can we keep the shootout off the news?”

“Maybe a few hours.” Rude dug in the pockets of his borrowed trousers to retrieve his PHS and checked the time. “Gone past 1400 now. Evening edition hits the stands in three hours. But it’s already all over the pirate frequencies.”

Shinra Company had bought out Costa del Sol’s paper of record years ago, but it couldn’t stop every amateur with a ham radio from broadcasting whatever paranoid histrionics they felt like airing. The executive board was convinced that pirate radio like this was the entire reason Avalanche could organize as well as it did. The Investigative Division did not tend to hold this view, seeing as it was stupid.

Here, however, Rude had a point. Even if Shinra PR went into total cleanup mode, the city’s rumor mill had already kicked into high gear. Tilly could spend the rest of the day aboard Jacob Ransom’s yacht and the news of a “terrorist attack” on Ladresco’s warehouses would still find a way to reach her. It might be too late already.

Reno sought around the infirmary bed and found his purse, its designer leather exterior all but melted away to reveal the watertight lining underneath. Good ol’ Shinra tech. The clasp had fused shut, but he found some scissors on the surgical tray and punctured holes in it until he could pull out his phone -- as well as “Ceci’s.”

His work PHS warned of a new voicemail from Tseng, which he ignored for now. “Ceci’s” phone had over a dozen missed calls, and nearly as many messages.

“Shit,” Reno muttered, tapping through the numbers. The lion’s share were from Tilly, unsurprisingly, but one of the voicemails was from Ladresco’s personal line.

 _“Hello, Mx Toast -- or should I say Ceci? I must say I’m delighted to hear from you, though I imagine we both wish the circumstances could be better.”_ Ladresco’s tinny recorded voice chuckled at its own not-really-a-joke. Reno switched on speaker mode; he’d need to relay the contents to Rude anyway, and it wasn’t like anyone else was in the infirmary with them just then. _“It’s a little past ten just now, but I seem to have missed you. Mister Ransom says you took off suddenly, something about disrobing in front of his nephew?”_

Rude shot a questioning look at Reno, who shrugged sheepishly.

_“If you would still like to meet, I’ll be attending Miss Kaku’s salon this afternoon. Perhaps we could find a quiet corner and you could tell me what’s troubling you. I’ve been through marriage a few times myself…”_

“What the hell did you tell him?” Rude asked, as the recording prattled on.

“Nothing important,” Reno said innocently, and then lost his nerve immediately. “Really! I mighta just kinda… suggested you’re abusive,” he confessed. He waggled the phone. “Look, it worked, didn’t it? He’s not suspicious at all.”

“Yeah. Only he’s not the one we’re after.”

Reno cringed. Right, if he’d been more thorough, if he hadn’t immediately discounted Tilly as a possible target, they wouldn’t have wasted so much time. He selected the next voice message.

 _“Ceci!”_ Tilly von Astur’s distressed cry rose up from the phone speaker. _“Come back to the boat right this instant! Oh dear, you probably won’t even hear this--”_ There was a rustle of movement and a click.

Next message: _“Hello Ceci, darling. It’s just past noon now. I want to apologize for what I said earlier… If I’d known you’d take it to heart in such a dramatic fashion, I’d have chosen my words more carefully. I take it you’re safe on land and dried off now. Would you give me a call?”_

Next message: _“About what I said before, dearest, please don’t hold that little outburst against me. I suppose I’m just an old-fashioned romantic at heart. You know that I would always value your friendship, regardless of any other relationship we may have…”_

Another questioning look from Rude. “She means the artifact,” Reno said, and the arched eyebrow suggested his partner didn’t quite believe that one either.

The remaining messages were all in the same vein: Tilly cajoling “Ceci” to call her back, begging forgiveness for imagined slights, and just generally a lot of… gushing.

 _“You know it’s only because I believe you and Roux make such a lovely couple,”_ Tilly pleaded in one recording. _“If he’s controlling, I’m sure it’s only because--”_

Reno snapped the phone shut, the tips of his ears going red.

Rude cleared his throat.

“ _Am_ I controlling?” he asked, in a quiet, tightly-managed voice.

“No! I was acting,” Reno shot back, but the blush was spreading to his cheeks now. “None of this shit is real, Rude. We’re partners. And Tseng made you the point person on this mission, so--”

“I don’t like giving you orders. You don’t listen, and then you rush into things--”

“I was trying to fix shit,” Reno protested.

“And look where it got us.”

“We can still salvage it! There was nothing in there about Avalanche. I’ll call Tilly back, set up a meeting, we’ll go out there before rush hour--”

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Rude, shutting that one down right away. He took another glance at the blood bag. Morbidly, they’d both received enough transfusions in this line of work to have a pretty good sense of how long one of these pint bags took to empty; this one had maybe 45 minutes left on it. “I’ll go. Set up a time for 1600.”

“You heard those messages; she’ll freak the fuck out if you show up by yourself.”

“Only because you put those ideas in her head. Just tell her it was a misunderstanding.”

“Holy shit, Rude. You think that wouldn’t send up a million red flags for her?”

Rude hesitated, appearing to consider this. His scowl deepened. “Forget it. We’ll put her under surveillance. If Avalanche makes a move, or she tries to skip town, Ruluf and Freyra can intercept.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Reno said. “This’s the whole reason Veld didn’t want a rookie on point for this thing.”

“We’re low on options, thanks to you.”

Something broke in Reno that was not his ribs. “Go fuck yourself, Rude,” he snapped. “One minute you’re micromanaging everything I do, the next it’s _‘good luck, partner! I’m off to do real Turk stuff for a while, you just go do your tea party shit or whatever.’_ You know what? You _are_ a bad husband.”

“Wonder what that makes you?” Rude countered. “You haven’t thought about anything but yourself since we got here.”

“I hustled my ass off on this mission!” And he’d done it in heels, with creeps and people like Ruluf undermining him the whole way, and did Rude see him complaining about that? “I played these shitbirds’ games _and_ yours. I didn’t drink, didn’t get high, didn’t drag randos back from the clubs to bang in my _fucking guest room_. But I catch one bullet and suddenly--”

“Five,” said Rude. “It was five bullets.”

Reno felt a twinge up his back again, the little cold spots dotted over his chest where freshly-knitted skin marked his recent surgery. Nine holes, the doctor had said, which meant at least one of the bullets hadn’t passed through, and Ruluf had mentioned shrapnel as well… Reno chewed the inside of his cheek, hand touching the side of his ribs.

Rude said, “If you had died…”

“No way that woulda killed me,” Reno muttered. “Freyra was right there. She woulda done something, even without the old guy.”

“Freyra showed up in a sling this morning.”

“So?”

“So she sees how reckless you are and copies it. One day it’s gonna get somebody killed.”

“And it’ll be my fault, is that what you’re saying?”

Rude sighed. “No.”

“No? Good. We’re all adults here, partner. If she can’t hack it, it’s ‘cause she didn’t have the right stuff to begin with.” Reno folded both arms over his chest, stubbornly ignoring the complaints from his newly-stitched muscles as he glared at the ceiling. “I just wanted a fucking vacation…”

A prickly silence settled in between them. Rude watched the level of the blood bag as it slowly emptied. Reno picked at the tape over the back of his hand.

Talking was the problem, he was sure of it now. They got along perfectly so long as they were drinking, or kicking the shit out of a target, or both, but put some mild disagreement in their path and you might as well shut the whole thing down.

The minutes stretched out until the silence was roaring in Reno’s ears. If he could roll over and sleep, maybe Rude would be gone by the time he woke up, but despite this already having been _a day_ , Reno didn’t feel the least bit tired. He fidgeted with whatever was near to hand: the IV, the button clasps on his hospital gown, the scissors from the surgical tray, “Ceci’s” phone. He even toyed with his work PHS, spinning it on his knee as he evaluated whether he was bored enough to actually listen to Tseng’s voicemail.

Finally, Reno stole a quick glance sideways. At some point, Rude had nodded off in his crappy fold-out chair, shades inching incrementally down the bridge of his nose. Somehow they always ended up playing games Rude had an advantage in.

...Still…

Reno couldn’t remember having watched Rude sleep before, though it must have happened at some point. He looked softer, smaller somehow, slouched in his chair with a slack expression -- peaceful, like a big lion folding his paws under himself as he slept the afternoon away. Very easy on the eyes.

But Reno’s restlessness about this situation was reaching a fever pitch and he was about to go bouncing off the walls if he didn’t take _some_ kind of action. He tossed his PHS to the foot of the bed and brought up his recent calls on “Ceci’s” phone.

By his estimate, Tilly von Astur should’ve been deeply engrossed at Delilah Kaku’s poetry salon at that moment, but she picked up before the second ring.

“Ceci!” she exclaimed. “Oh, thank goodness! When you didn’t return my calls I started to fear the worst. After that fright on Saturday, I, well, I was beside myself. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, just had to find a charger,” Reno answered in a low voice, leaning away from Rude’s side. “Hey so listen. First of all, I just wanted to set the record straight about Rud-- Roux. We’re totally fine, nobody’s hitting anybody else, so just forget about it, all right?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Reno cringed inwardly; if there was a more tactful way to ass-cover in this situation, he didn’t know it, but that didn’t stop this method from sucking.

“Ah… I see,” Tilly said hesitantly, not remotely convinced. “Well… if it’s between Roux and you it’s really none of my business to begin with, but if you ever find that you need a friendly ear--”

“Actually,” Reno said, “can I come over and see the artifact like we talked about?”

“Well, I -- oh goodness -- I’m actually at the theater right now,” she confessed at a whisper. “A matinee performance of _I Want to Be Your Canary_ with Lissbeth Alexander in the role of Cornelia. Are you familiar with her work?”

“Uh--”

“Thrilling, experimental performance. I stepped out to powder my nose and I just so happened to see your call. I suppose I could step out early to go prepare things at the cottage but… I wouldn’t want to cause a scene…”

“Yeah, but you’d make an exception for me, right?”

“Oh…” Tilly dithered. “I just don’t know, Nguyen was insistent that pieces for the event shouldn’t be shown ahead of Wednesday… I heard there was _another_ attack just this morning in the shipping district, if you can imagine. Giorno said he’d been targeted and, well! You and I both know that no cultured individual would spare his collection a glance, but these terrorists aren’t especially educated, are they?”

“Actually,” Reno began, and then tamped that down again. In Tilly’s world there was no distinction to be drawn between ‘educated’ and ‘attended a reputable finishing school.’ “Look, whatever your target bid is for this thing, I’ll double it, okay? I can bring the cash over right now.”

“‘Cash,’” Tilly repeated with delight, drawing out the ‘S.’ But her amusement was short-lived. “Oh but Nguyen was emphatic that we shouldn’t consider private offers… What should I do…”

Reno decided to go for broke. “See, the thing is, my flight got moved up to tomorrow, so I really have to--”

A hand closed around his phone.

Reno snapped his head around in time to see Rude launching out of his chair at him, one knee bent and up on the bed with the IV tube trailing behind him like an ineffectual leash. Reno backed away, but Rude was surprisingly quick, grabbing his partner by the elbow and with the other hand wrenching the phone from Reno’s grasp.

“Ceci?” Tilly’s digitized voice quavered, as the phone dropped onto the bed. “Ceci, are you still there?”

“Rude!” Reno hissed, teeth bared. “Don’t fuck this up for me!”

“I told you,” Rude said. “You’re off the mission.”

“Fuck you, no I’m not!” Reno twisted, attempting to swing his captive fist into a punch, and succeeded only in sending a bolt of pain up his side. He groaned. “God _dammit_ , Rude!”

It all rushed to a head at once: the anger, anxiety, desperation all coalesced with Reno’s stupid untended frustration and he flung himself at Rude, shoving their mouths together in a snarling kiss full of teeth.

Rude answered in kind, hot breath and a growl in his throat. His hand left Reno’s elbow and went to the back of his head instead, grabbing a tight fistful of fiery hair. The other remained around Reno’s wrist, pinning it to the sheets as he forced him back down against the mattress, the warm, solid weight of his body bearing down until Reno’s breathing was compressed to a thin, struggling gasp.

“Ceci!” cried Tilly from the phone. “Are you all right? Is that Roux there?”

Reno kicked helplessly, bare heels digging grooves into the narrow bed, and happened to knock “Ceci’s” phone off the sheets and onto the floor. It bounced on its edge and snapped shut; he barely noticed. This had a completely different tenor than Rude’s other kisses, even the one he’d sprung on Reno in Midgar which had set off this dumbfuck argument of theirs. Now Rude was straddling him, boot buckles sharp where his ankles locked around Reno’s shins, leaning his entire body weight onto his partner’s shoulders while he kissed him insensate.

 _This’ll just end the same way as every other time,_ Reno thought dimly, too lightheaded to do much but claw at Rude’s back with his one free hand while his partner continued to drink the goddamn life out of him. His heart battered like a hummingbird against his ears and he bucked his hips reflexively, trying to get any kind of contact at all through the coarse hospital gown fabric.

As if in answer to some unvoiced prayer, Rude shifted his weight atop him, getting a hand between their bodies. Reno gasped into his partner’s mouth, eyes popping open wide as Rude’s fingers pushed up the loose hem and stroked purposefully over his slit, the rough ridges of his thumb finding Reno’s clitoris.

Reno lasted exactly three strokes before a short, sudden spasm rocked through his body, a pitiful cry lost against Rude’s lips. 

Above him, Rude’s brow furrowed. He backed off slightly, shades hanging crooked as he studied the heavy flush spreading over Reno’s skin. “Did you just--?”

“Shut up shut up _shut up_ it’s been a _whole week,_ okay?” Reno pushed a few messy clumps of hair out of his eyes, his vision swimming. Rude had eased up with his fingers but he was still drawing lazy circles around his clit with his thumb, prolonging the little aftershocks running up and down his thighs. “Jus’ gimme a second here.”

Rude frowned, pausing with his thumb. “Should I stop?”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Realistically, they should. Everything was screaming that this was the worst possible moment to consummate two and a half years of mostly-unresolved sexual tension with one’s coworker, but Reno’s body wasn’t listening anymore. In his head he kept hearing what the Legend had said to Rude the night before: _“So what if you fuck things up? You just go and unfuck them again.”_

The warm haziness of orgasm starting to subside, Reno wriggled out from under Rude’s hold and pushed himself up into a sitting position, hands at his partner’s shoulders. “Now you,” he said. “Lemme do you for a bit.”

That elicited a soft chuckle. “You don’t have to,” said Rude.

“Bullshit I don’t, unless you’ve been cheating.”

Rude shook his head emphatically, which stirred something feral in Reno’s chest. It was such a stupid thing to be charmed about, but the idea that Rude really had held up his end of their little contest these last few days, for _him_ … He purred and pushed at Rude’s shoulders until he finally relented and sat back, sitting with his legs open on the narrow infirmary bed. Reno climbed over on hands and knees, yanking the saline IV out as he went.

“Keep it in,” he told Rude, when his partner moved to pull the needle from his own arm as well. Blood was probably more important, plus there was something weirdly kinky about it, ‘attending’ to Rude while they were both sorta-injured like this. “Don’t wantcha fainting on me.”

“Already bragging,” Rude said with a smirk, letting his IV stay where it was for now.

“It ain’t bragging if I can back it up.” After all, this part was familiar territory, even if it was Reno’s first time doing it to Rude stone-cold sober. But he did stall for a moment at the sight of Rude’s (plain cotton) briefs, an unsettling sensation of deja vu creeping up his back.

“Well?” Rude prompted.

Reno licked his lips and plunged on ahead, tugging the briefs out of the way. There was nothing beneath except gorgeous chestnut skin and a neatly-groomed V of thick dark hair -- and, of course, Rude’s cock, springing up nearly fully erect the moment the elastic band slipped away, the foreskin drawn away from the glistening dark tip.

Reno let out a small sigh of relief. 

“...What?”

“N, nothing.”

He dropped down onto his elbows, sweeping shock-red hair out of his face as he descended on Rude, lips closing around the proud head of his cock as above him Rude grunted and held his breath. He tasted strongly of salt, the accumulation of the day’s physical exertions flooding through Reno’s mouth as he swirled his tongue around the fat, flared ridges, sucking at the watery precome gathering at the slit.

Even like this, the size was enough to make Reno’s jaw ache in a matter of minutes, but he wasn’t going to be satisfied with that. Rude’s scent just unlocked something in him, the powerful bouquet of sweat and raw testosterone going straight past Reno’s brain down the center of his body and into his soaking cunt. Tongue pressed to the floor of his mouth, he began taking Rude in deeper, past his teeth, toward his throat.

“Fuck,” Rude breathed above him, a hand tightening in the back of his hair again. Reno moaned with approval as his teeth grazed over a vein and Rude’s fingers dug in, nails scraping at his scalp. There was something almost scandalous about Rude being without his gloves for this, like they were trespassing over one final border separating their work lives from the rutting animal part of themselves.

Reno broke away abruptly, but only long enough to drop down from the rickety bed onto his knees on the infirmary floor, hands on Rude’s thighs as he swallowed him down again. The tip hit the back of Reno’s throat and he pushed down his gag reflex, willing the muscles to relax. His eyes fluttered shut and he breathed in the luxurious, velvety musk of Rude’s sweat, letting it wash over him in trance-like meditation as he sucked down the shaft, backed off, advanced again, until finally he felt the flared ridge of the head pop through.

“Reno--” Said like a breathless little prayer, the last traces of Rude’s composure fracturing and falling away as his fingers knotted painfully in his partner’s hair. It was the world’s greatest high, being in complete control like this, holding someone’s life literally in his jaws. But even better was the fact it was _Rude_ he was doing this to, Rude who he was making come apart at the seams. That one desperate little word on his lips...

Reno squeezed at the back of Rude’s knee, encouraging.

Slowly, hesitantly, Rude started to jut his hips forward, nudging his cock deeper in stuttered half-movements, until Reno’s nose brushed against the coarse patch of tightly-curled hair over Rude’s pubic bone. He edged back, and it felt for half a second like Rude was going to take Reno’s whole throat with him -- then he was plunging back in again, faster, harder, and the strangled gagging noise Reno made translated only to a spasmic shuddering as Rude breathed hard through his teeth.

“Fuck, you’re so tight…”

Reno made a sound which meant to suggest that this wasn't as much of a compliment during throat-fucking, but that was more nuance than Rude seemed capable of processing at the moment. He had tipped his head back, the hand not buried in Reno’s hair braced on the mattress as though he was struggling, even then, to hold himself back and keep his thrusts shallow. So blissed out, the whole world was falling away.

That was it, then. Rude was going to come, and this really would end the same way as all their drunken Friday night mistakes. No fanfare, no real consummation, just a quick one-and-done--

Rude cupped a hand around the bottom of Reno’s drool-streaked chin, prompting him to look up. His partner’s attention was fully on him now, a tight grimace over his expression.

“Get up here,” Rude said, with an urgent edge to it.

Reno’s stupid queer heart could’ve exploded. He slipped Rude’s cock from his mouth (with maybe a little less caution than warranted) and sprung up on wobbly legs that had turned to jelly on the cold tile. A tight, searing pain zig-zagged up his back again, jolting a little groan from his raw throat.

“Hurts?” Rude asked.

“M’fine,” Reno said, in a raspy little cough that wouldn’t convince anyone. Some dicks just really weren’t meant for going in people's mouths.

Before he could raise a protest, Rude had settled Reno back down onto the infirmary bed, laid out on his back with his half-undone medical gown hanging from his shoulders. Getting rid of this was Rude’s first order of business; he tugged open the thin laces holding it together around Reno’s throat and popped the remaining snap fasteners, tossing the gown to the floor to join “Ceci’s” phone and the remains of the purse.

Reno held back his breath as Rude’s eyes took him in: his too-skinny torso with the ribs that stuck out, the hook-shaped scar above his hip, his legs that were too big where he didn’t want them and too scrawny everywhere else. His navel piercing, the usual stud swapped out for some jeweled thing to coordinate with his outfit, because Andrea believed in thoroughness. And his chest of course, nothing very exciting for Rude there -- although you wouldn’t know it from the way Rude was looking at it, dark eyes smoldering as he cupped both hands over Reno’s tiny sculpted pecs and squeezed.

“Whoa!”

“...Does that hurt?” Rude asked with a concerned frown, immediately relaxing his touch.

“No, I’m just--” Reno broke off into a giggle, feeling almost delirious. “Fuck, stop asking me things, my brain’s empty. Get down here.”

The crease deepened in Rude’s brow for a moment, but then he assented, leaning down for a kiss. Reno hummed happily into his mouth. He wrapped his arms around Rude’s shoulders, bent his legs to draw his partner down between them -- but then he felt resistance, as Rude dug around in his pockets for something he evidently wasn’t finding.

“Hang on,” Rude said, breaking off the kiss. Reno tightened his arms and tried pulling him down again, but Rude tossed his head aside, out of kissing range. “It’s an infirmary, they ought to have--”

“Oh no you don’t,” said Reno, leaning up to nip at his partner’s lower lip, regardless of what his back thought of the idea. The last thing either of them needed was some awkward, drawn-out conversation about prophylactics when they both knew their monthly medical exams always came back clean. And if Rude was worried about pregnancy, he _really_ hadn’t been paying attention. “C’mon, I’m losing my mind here. Stow the gentleman bit for next time.”

Rude huffed, but it was clear from his eyes that even he was long past the normal limits of his endurance. He peeled out of Reno’s embrace, but only for the sake of rearranging their respective positions, standing and dragging Reno by the hips until his ass was halfway hanging off the bed.

“No macho stuff,” Rude warned, finally slipping the IV out, a thin trickle of blood going down the inside of his arm. The bag wasn't empty, but Reno was more concerned about Rude’s wounded leg, and he seemed to be standing on that just fine. “If it hurts, tell me.”

“Now who’s bragging?”

“Reno.”

“All right, all right. Please _safely_ wreck my pussy, Mister Rude.”

“Next time I’m gagging you,” Rude muttered, hooking a hand around his partner’s thigh.

Reno snickered. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

The second the tip of Rude’s cock nudged against his slit, Reno’s head truly did go blank, the entire universe narrowing down to that single point of contact between their two bodies. He felt the weight of it resting against his folds, the little crackles of electricity when Rude rolled his hips and ground against him, slicking the shaft until they were both wet and messy. He breathed in deep and held it, propped up on his elbows and watching, transfixed, as Rude lined up the head and made a first, tentative push against his entrance.

“Oh, _fuck_ \--”

Too big. That was Reno’s first half-panicked thought. Rude’s dick didn’t feel tapered at all, just a solid column of flesh battering against his hole until the fragile muscle finally gave under the assault. The head slipped inside with a burning stretch so intense it felt almost like something was tearing and Reno gasped out, the world going fuzzy at the edges. 

Rude looked down at him in frank astonishment. “Did you--? Again--?”

“ _Yes,_ shut up, stop asking me that,” Reno groaned, his cunt still spasming. He slipped a hand between them to give his clit a few pulls, trying to draw this one out longer than his last surprise climax. “Keep going.”

“Heh.”

Rude smirked, and there was a hint of smugness there that (to be fair) was probably well-deserved. Which didn’t prevent Reno from brattily shoving his hips forward, trying to force a little more of Rude’s cock inside him. His partner snapped out of whatever self-congratulatory reverie he was falling into and caught Reno as his ass dangled off the edge of the mattress, supporting him with both hands.

This would be a whole lot easier if Reno were riding on top, but at least he was adjusting a little faster now. Every shallow movement still felt like a tiny electric shock scouring his skin; he was playing pretty fast and loose with the definition of ‘hurts’ and if his partner wasn’t so taken up with his own need at that moment, no doubt he would have noticed. Rude pushed him back until his weight balanced on the edge of the bed again and shoved his thighs further apart, sheathing himself almost to the hilt in one brain-scrambling thrust. A startled noise fell from Reno’s lips, his body curling in on itself in a spasm of hot static. Not quite another climax, but close enough to leave him breathless, scrabbling for balance while his partner fucked him right through the white noise.

“Ah -- Rude, I--”

Wordlessly, Rude hooked a hand around the back of Reno’s knee and flipped him onto his side, thrusting deeper as his girth stretched him out in new places. Reno couldn’t even get his limbs coordinated long enough to reach down and touch himself, overwhelmed by the force of Rude’s strokes together with fire hose of stimulation.

“I’m gonna--” Except that he couldn’t, this angle wasn’t hitting his G-spot at all, every thrust just felt like being split open and dashed against the rocks, too much sensation and not enough all at once. “Rude--!!”

“Almost,” Rude grunted between brutal movements of his hips. “I’ll pull out--”

“Don’t!” It didn’t matter either way, but for a moment the flood of mental images sent a shudder through Reno’s body, his pussy clamping down around Rude’s battering ram of a cock. Rude marking him, claiming him, _changing_ him... “I want it. Inside.”

Rude let out a low groan, the thought of this apparently doing as much for him as it did for his partner. He grappled at Reno’s sweat-slicked thigh, turning him over again -- this time onto his stomach. The fire in Reno's back muscles subsided at the same time as Rude slammed as far as he could into his heat, stretching his inner walls to their breaking point and grinding relentlessly against that sweet spot. Rude reached around and gathered Reno’s aching thumb-sized clit between his fingers, alternatingly stroking and squeezing it until Reno’s brain hit a curb and went skidding, fireworks going off in his veins.

Reno was usually loud during sex, because he saw no reason not to be. In his opinion, everyone was entitled to know when he was having a good time. But like this -- shoved into a shitty hard infirmary mattress, exhaustion climbing, nerves fried insensate -- all that he managed was a weak, broken cry, as Rude shuddered and finally spent himself deep inside.

Empires rose and fell in the time they spent catching their breath.

“...Wow,” Reno said at last, fully aware it wasn’t the most interesting thing to say.

“Nnh,” Rude agreed. He wasn’t pulling out yet, hadn’t even begun to go soft. But he did reach up to rake a few fingers through Reno’s hair, which sent a pleasant electric tingle down his spine.

“Can’t believe we didn’t do that sooner.”

“Hm.”

Two and a half years sooner. Or failing that, last week. Imagine how smoothly this whole mission would’ve gone if they had just fucked each other’s brains out any time they had a disagreement.

Rude did separate from him then -- slowly, hand around the base of his shaft, like he was afraid of pulling part of Reno out with him -- but only long enough to peel off his shirt and rearrange their positions again, laying Reno out on his back over the narrow bed and settling down half on top of him, sticky half-hard cock resting against his thigh. He should put that away before he stained his trousers, Reno was tempted to comment, but then he caught the look in Rude’s eye.

“Hold on,” said Reno, eyebrows lifting in disbelief. “Again?”

“It’s not going down,” Rude admitted, a little sheepish.

Well. Rude _was_ a strapping 24-year-old in excellent physical condition, after all. And he hadn’t jerked off in a few days, which probably contributed. Reno felt himself clench with anticipation, despite the lingering soreness between his legs. He licked his lips again, hands going to Rude’s shoulders. It probably couldn’t happen this way every time, but the idea of having a partner -- and not just anyone, but _his_ partner -- who could maybe, possibly keep up with him now and then was so…

“Senpai!” called a familiar, cheerful voice from the infirmary doorway. “Are you both up? I brought you some lunch from the cante-- OH MY GOD.”

An ordinary individual would, in a moment like this, grab the nearest piece of fabric and attempt to cover themself. But Turks weren’t ordinary, especially when startled. Faster than a blink, Rude wrapped an arm around Reno and swung them both over the side of the mattress onto the floor. Reno hit the cold tile with his bare ass and yelped, reflexively yanking at the drooping bedsheet for support, which caught in one of the rickety bed casters and sent the whole cheap mess tumbling down onto Rude’s back.

Freyra fled from the room as quickly as she’d appeared, shrilling out a panicked litany of apologies and promises that she didn’t see anything. And that if she _did_ see something, it was Rude’s and Reno’s own business and she totally, absolutely, 100% would never tell a soul. And that she was just going to leave the lunch there on the counter for them. And congratulations, not that she had any idea what she was congratulating them about because, again, she didn’t see anything.

“I’ll just lock the door for you!” she announced on her way out, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Take your time!”

The door swished shut behind her, and in the ensuing silence they heard the distinct clunk of the automated deadbolt as the outward motion sensor went offline.

Beneath their makeshift cover, Rude and Reno slowly let out a laugh.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> -Violence.  
> -Feels.

# 5 (Wednesday)

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”

Reno blinked muzzily. Still antiseptic green walls. Still the warm, pleasant soreness between his legs. A Shinra security guard stood over the side of his infirmary bed, holding a black garment bag.

Clothes. Reno palmed a hand down his front, felt the coarse infirmary sheets tucked snuggly over his chest, and below it the familiar snap-together gown. Rude had apparently seen an opportunity to be gentlemanly and tucked him in before departing.

“Can’t believe he managed to knock you out that long,” the security guard continued cheerfully. “Musta really needed that dick, huh?”

If Reno had cat ears, they would’ve flattened against his skull at that. He pushed himself up on his elbows, hair sticking out at all angles. “Excuse you, bitch?” he asked, in a scratched voice that came out weaker than he liked.

The security guard lifted a black-gloved hand to his helmet, tilting it back far enough to reveal a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses and bright ginger sideburns.

“Thought you might need a change of clothes,” said the Legend with his fishhook grin, hefting the garment bag. “So I stopped by the villa for ya and threw a few things together.”

Reno definitely didn’t trust the styling intuition of anyone with muttonchops, but he supposed it beat limping back to the villa with his whole ass hanging out. Anyway, he’d worn weirder outfits in the past… eight hours? Ten?

“What time is it?” he asked, pushing aside the blankets and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. There was still a little residual pain lingering in his back, but a nap had sped along his recovery enough that it wouldn’t be a distraction. Whether he could walk without looking bowlegged was another matter...

Funnily enough, Reno couldn’t really recall how he’d fallen asleep. He and Rude had cleaned up after Freyra left, but the mood had kinda been lost, so they’d just sat on the bed for a while, eating their lunch and making out. Then Rude had shown Reno a pill and told him the doctor gave it to security personnel here for _‘energy.’_ The only thing Reno could remember after that was sinking drowsily into bed, getting kissed into lazy incoherence while Rude assured him he and the rookies could handle the rest of the mission.

The shiny bald bastard. After everything they’d shared, he’d gone right back to sidelining him.

“Bit after eleven,” said the Legend, after a quick check of his watch, incongruously expensive with the standard-issue security uniform. Reno doubted that the staff here would’ve even noticed a spare Turk hanging around, but maybe the old guy just liked dressing up.

“At night?” he asked.

“Hah, no. It’s Wednesday, kid.”

“--Cocksucking son of a bitch!”

Reno shot out of bed like a spooked pigeon. He yanked free the snaps and laces of his hospital gown, tossing it aside. The Legend put up some token effort of averting his eyes while Reno snatched the garment bag from him and threw it on the bed, tearing open the zippers.

“Easy now,” said the elder Turk, stolen glances getting progressively less subtle. “The big guy said he’s got a handle on everything already. He’s got the kids surveilling the von Astur estate and Freyra’s retinue is monitoring Avalanche comm chatter. If the artifact shows up, we’re gonna be the first to know.”

“That leaves nobody covering the auction,” said Reno. He held the delicate chiffon jumpsuit-thing up to the light and groaned. “Is this all you brought?”

“Nah, I’ve got some shoes in there.” The Legend sounded inappropriately proud of himself. “What, I choose the wrong color?”

“I need more storage.”

“‘Storage’?” Finally the Legend abandoned pretense and openly swept his gaze up and down Reno’s body. “Honey, you’re stacked like a beanpole. What’re you planning on carrying?”

In a perfect world, Reno would have liked to climb right over the bed and deck him, seniority be damned. But there was no time. He tossed the jumpsuit aside and resumed digging through the garment bag, combing through handfuls of scarves and belts and other things that didn’t remotely go together. He might as well wear the bag itself.

A thought occurred.

“Forget it,” he said, hauling on the chiffon stuff for now. Scandalizing the Shinra rank and file was a fond old pastime of Reno’s, but he didn’t feel like giving the kids a free show just then. “Freyra said she left a suitcase around here.”

* * *

Regalia Resort occupied a significant chunk of the coastline between Costa del Sol’s shipping district and the boardwalk, on a sprawling complex of golf courses, fitness centers, and heated swimming pools. Where the Soluna had its grand ballroom overlooking the city, the Regalia’s was located on the ground floor opposite a plaza -- a security nightmare.

Nguyen’s guys were giving it their best shot anyway. Reno spotted two stationed at every door and five at the front lobby entrance, their black suits and shades making them about as subtle as, well, as Turks. Two of them held magnetic wands. The other three carried concealed pistols and stood around stiffly pretending as though they didn’t.

“What’s the plan, again?” the Legend muttered at Reno’s right, bending an arm for the younger Turk to link with his. He’d switched out of the Shinra guard getup for his usual attire, plus a fedora he must imagine made him less conspicuous. “Double charm offensive?”

“Quiet,” Reno ordered. He fingered the scarf tied around his throat, knotted at the side in a way fashion writers could only call ‘jaunty.’ “I didn’t expect ‘em to have metal detectors.”

It had taken forever to find a dress in Freyra’s steamer trunk that both fit Reno’s hips and had a skirt long enough to hide a thigh holster. The end result had him looking less like a fancy androgyne and more like a teenage girl cosplaying an anthropologist: belted explorer dress with oversized cargo pockets, ankle boots, silk scarf; pink cheeks that could charitably be described as ‘wind-chaffed,’ although more accurately the result of a rush job with a tube of concealer. About the state of Reno’s hair, the less said, the better.

The Legend fidgeted uncomfortably, scanning for escape routes. It hadn’t actually taken much effort to con him into coming along, but now that things were about to heat up, he was getting restless. 

“You know it ain’t me this is gonna blow back on, if the chief gets wind of this,” he said. Veld would look past a deactivated agent skirting his house arrest way before he forgave Reno knowingly pulling one into the field. “Just ‘cause I crash these people’s parties doesn’t mean--”

“Excuse me, Mx Toast,” said the widest and tallest of Nguyen’s men, the bouncer who had been outside the Soluna restaurant on Saturday. Marcus, Reno recalled. He extended an arm to bar the Turks’ path when they attempted to walk past without stopping. “I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”

Reno shifted gears, assuming a confused pout. Most of the lines he’d prepared for this moment were the same ones he used for getting into clubs back in Midgar. “I should be on the list,” he said.

“Mister Nguyen has reconsidered his invitation,” said Marcus. “I must ask you to leave the premises.”

Oh, Marcus. Big, meaty Marcus. A few days ago Reno had wanted to climb all over that. Now he was just one more low-level hurdle in an already annoying day. 

“Aw, there’s gotta be a mistake!” Reno complained, dialing his Whine Factor up to ‘I Want to See Your Manager’ levels. One of the magnetic wand-wielding guards was trying to get close enough to lift his skirt; he deftly moved out of range. Beside him, the Legend shifted his weight, clenching and unclenching his gloved fists. “Just let me inside to talk to Nguyen; I’m sure we can clear all this up.”

Unfortunately, negotiations fell apart before they could begin. One moment, the Legend was standing next to Reno; the next, he was climbing onto Marcus’s back, a length of glittering steel piano wire drawn from the side of his overdesigned wristwatch.

With an internal sigh, Reno dropped character and drove his fist into the nearest guard’s stomach, magnetic wand wailing with distress as it fell from his grasp. Then he sprinted for one of the concealed-carry guys, who was just starting to dip a hand into his jacket.

By the time Reno had that dude eating pavement, the Legend had the remaining three guards all laid out, and he was sheepishly folding his deadly little gadgets back into his watch.

“Sorry,” said the elder Turk. “Reflex.”

“Damn." Despite himself, Reno was impressed. "Where can I get a piece like that?”

“Got it made custom,” the Legend said, grinning.

Belatedly, Reno remembered to feel annoyed. He looked around at the five groaning bodies sprawled out at their feet. “Might as well've called every guard in the building down on our heads,” he said, kneeling beside the crumpled-up heap of Marcus. He searched his pockets until he found a keycard for the door. “I’ll get to Nguyen, you take care of things out here.”

“Leave it to me, kid. Have some fun in there.”

* * *

The doors whispered shut behind Reno just as the auctioneer’s gavel cracked against the podium.

“Sold, to the madam from Nidavellir for five hundred thousand gil,” said the reedy, stick insect of a man, to a sedate patter of applause. On the stage beside the podium, a chest-high steel cage containing a hissing, furious cockatrice was being carefully hauled away.

Reno slid into a gap between some ornamental pillars and took in the layout. In addition to the rows of chairs nearest the stage, there were several dining tables set up closer to the rear of the room, flanked by well-stocked buffet tables. The catering staff were just wrapping up and receding into the background as a bump of feedback sounded from the podium and a familiar voice rose up over the speakers.

“Dear friends, thank you,” said Nguyen, with that usual eternally-patient tone of his, wearing a black suit that was only modestly fancier than his usual attire. “At this time I believe we’ll break for lunch. We’ll resume with an interesting selection curated by the Lady Mathilda von Astur beginning at 1pm.”

Reno spotted a daintily-waving hand from the front row, barely visible next to its owner’s latest enormous headpiece. His heart sank. If Tilly was already here, it meant either she’d slipped Ruluf and Freyra’s surveillance and the artifact was already here at the hotel, or she’d arrived separately from whatever was transporting the artifact and the thing was inbound at that exact moment.

He dug into one of the oversized cargo pockets on his dress and pulled out his work PHS. He’d exchanged a few messages with Freyra on the cab ride over, so he had a decent idea of her and Ruluf’s movements. If they were on the way, he needed to know.

Freyra’s reply was almost immediate. “were on the freeway rn!!” she wrote, attaching a location ping. “blk panel trk plate gsc738.”

The license plate did Reno no good from his position, but the location ping gave him a rough idea of their ETA. He sent Freyra a half-hearted warning about texting while driving and stowed his phone again, taking another scan of the crowd.

There. Nguyen was leaving the podium, slipping out somewhere behind the stage. Reno detached himself from the shadows and made a circuitous route across the floor, weaving through milling clusters of attendees who paid him only passing and disdainful attention. If anyone recognized him in his dowdy ‘safari couture,’ they weren’t approaching him. Twice he brushed shoulders with individuals from Nguyen’s inner circle, only for them to retreat and murmur harshly to their companions, the gossip mill doing all the work of a few brass knuckles and baseball bats.

At one point, he caught a voice calling Ceci’s name. He ducked behind the podium, taking in another scan of his surroundings. Behind the stage and the erected projection screen lay a set of fire doors, one of which was propped open by a cheap conference chair; the wall behind it was stenciled with the words ‘E BLDG SECURITY OFFICE’ followed by an arrow pointing helpfully down the corridor.

Well.

Reno waited one more beat and then slid from the podium to the doorway. He kicked the chair away from the door, allowing it to swing shut with a heavy sigh as he strode into the hallway.

The security office was a cramped, windowless room wedged between a maintenance closet and staff bathrooms. Rows of surveillance cameras lined the inside: views of the ballroom, hallways, the hotel lobby, the outdoor plaza, and elevator cars crammed onto narrow walls, looming over a too-small computer console.

Whether because the staff were on a break or he’d sent them out, Nguyen was alone in the office when Reno entered.

“Ah, Mx Toast,” he said, not turning to greet him. His gaze was fixed on a row of video feeds two-thirds of the way up the wall, showing the corridors outside the ballroom. Reno could make out little dark figures sprawled out in the bottom of the screens on some of them, a sign the Legend had recently paid a visit. “It seems Marcus failed to convey my wishes.”

“He did,” said Reno, placing a hand at his hip. “I just kinda ignored ‘im.”

“I see. Very unfortunate. I suppose it hardly matters now, but for my own edification, are you the real Ceci Magdalene Toast, or a Shinra puppet sent in their place?”

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ \-- “I dunno if I’d say ‘puppet.’”

“Tilly will be glad to hear it,” said Nguyen. “Her reputation is soon to be in shambles anyway; I’d rather she not suffer the additional humiliation of being betrayed by a friend.”

Something wasn’t adding up there, but in that ‘I’m making a villain speech’ way that made Reno reluctant to prod at any of what Nguyen was saying. His PHS buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

“Whatever,” he said instead. It occurred to Reno belatedly that he should probably have a gun out and pointed at Nguyen for maximum effect, but fetching one from a thigh holster at that moment would look too weird. “All she had to do was go to Shinra with a price.”

“Not everyone in this world wishes to do business with the devil,” Nguyen snapped, his voice rising in anger for the first time. “Tilly would not have to put her collection up for auction in the first place if your employer--”

“Yeah, no, I’m gonna stop you right there.” At least when Avalanche railed against Shinra, it was over higher-handed stuff than ‘somebody was better at capitalism than me.’ Reno’s pocket buzzed again, more insistently. “Look, _crazy as it might sound,_ I’m actually not keen on giving myself more shit to clean up just now?” Buzz. “So how about this: We go back to the party.” Buzz. “You tell Tilly I’ll cut her a check for whatever her little heart desires.” Buzz buzz. “And all of us go on our merry way.”

Nguyen smiled faintly, still watching the monitors. There was a flurry of activity in some of the feeds; Reno couldn’t tell if it was Legend-related or something else. “I’m afraid your accomplice is about to render that quite impossible.”

“Goddammit, what now?” Reno asked no one in particular, wandering closer to Nguyen to get a better look at the security feeds, just as his phone finally went quiet.

He expected to see the Legend on a tear through the staff corridors, tossing off his flashy grenades as he went. But the interior cameras showed nothing exceptional, just auction guests milling around buffet tables and unconscious security guards getting dragged out of frame. The busiest screen, the one currently holding Nguyen’s attention, showed the street outside the Regalia’s front entrance, with its expansive hedges and centerpiece fountain.

At the moment, there was a black panel truck with the license plate GSC-738 plowing its way through the scene. A certain bald-headed bastard was hanging from the front grille.

* * *

The text messages Reno had missed from Freyra read, in order:

“called rude senpai hes on intercept”

“hang on”

“OK I made Ruluf drive while I take pix lol”

“Rude-senpai is so cool! ヾ(≧∇≦*)ゝ [attachment failed to download]”

“∑(ΦдΦlll) He’s losing control!!”

“INCOMING <|๑⊙Д⊙|/”

A deep scar had been carved into the front lawn, tire grooves digging through grass and sod at a sharp angle where the truck had tried, and failed, to bank to the right and avoid collision with the fountain. The fountain currently lay in shambles, broken and exposed pipes spraying water jets into the air.

The truck itself lay further from the street, embedded into the hotel lobby wall, its engine neatly bisected around a faux-marble support pillar. Of Rude, there was no sign. Reno pushed his way through the growing mob of rubberneckers pouring out from the ballroom, fanning clouds of dust out of his face as he inspected the wreckage.

The trunk was jammed shut. Between the spiderweb cracks in the windows Reno could make out shapes in the back seat that might be the edges of shipping crates or traveling containers, but nothing that screamed ‘I contain a relic from a long-lost civilization.’ He went around the length of the car, found where the grille had more or less fused with the wall. No blood, no raw hamburger smell. Either Rude had gotten flung off before impact or he was sitting real cozy just then.

A broad, coarse hand closed around Reno’s shoulder. For a second his heart leapt, but the voice that spoke had a twang and generations of entitlement behind it.

“Awful presumptive of you, Toast,” said Jacob Ransom, “showing up for a party you weren’t invited to.”

No question about which member of Nguyen’s inner circle had been responsible for Reno getting the boot from the guest list, then. Reno looked over his shoulder, fixing Ransom with an evil eye through messy tangles of hair.

Ransom seemed to waver, his stern expression fracturing. He stared Reno down as if he was still seeing him shirtless, a concept that was either offensive to Ransom or gave rise to thoughts he hadn’t encountered before. A pretty common reaction in older men, in Reno’s experience.

“What’d you do with Nguyen?” Ransom growled, clawing back some measure of composure with himself.

Reno didn’t bat an eye. “He’s taking a break right now.”

Nguyen had been surprisingly amicable about it, perhaps because any insult he bore now he could return a hundredfold through whatever syndicate of tough guys he commanded. Veld wasn’t going to appreciate all the extra attention Reno was tracking to the Turks’ door, but in the near term at least it meant Nguyen had patiently held his hands together while Reno tied him up and barricaded him inside the security office.

Ransom snarled, tugging at Reno’s arm to spin him around and face him. “Everything’s gone to hell since you turned up. I told Tilly that she couldn’t trust a Shinra. Even his inbred backwater cousins run to him in the end.”

Before Reno could formulate a comeback, a screech of tires caught their attention. He whipped his head toward the truck-shaped hole in the front doors, sighting an armored vehicle fishtailing in their direction. Reno clicked his teeth.

“Move,” he ordered, and without waiting for a reply dove for cover behind the wreck, just as a volley of bullets pockmarked the wall behind him.

The crowd of gawkers scattered, the poor clerk behind the front desk ducking underneath her counter out of sight. Ransom landed on his side by Reno’s feet, swearing and scrabbling to push himself up on hands and knees.

“I knew this would happen!” he cried, hat falling askew. He dug around the inside pockets his unseasonably warm duster, but slowed as he noticed Reno’s hand venturing beneath his skirt. “Damn it, Toast! You got any shame at all?”

Reno showed him the gun he was busy unstrapping from his thigh.

“Oh,” said Ransom, blood trying to drain from his face at the same time as it was rushing to his cheeks. He averted his eyes, landed on something on Reno’s chest. “Wait. You’re a Muskie!”

The term was weird enough for Reno to stop loading his pistol long enough to have a look down the front of his dress. He noticed the enamel pin fixed above the breast pocket, the clawed chocobo track criss-crossed with two rifles. Reno had just thoughtlessly thrown it on to complete the look, but now that he saw it up close, he recalled seeing Freyra wear it a time or two with her work suit. A membership badge to some sort of Mideel big game hunters guild.

“Seems like I had you wrong, Toast,” said Ransom, finally shucking off his coat to reveal surprisingly toned arms in a tight black turtleneck -- and a shotgun almost as big as its owner. So much for Marcus’s security. “Any fellow Muskie is a friend of mine. I’ll hold the fort here; you get the civilians to safety.”

Reno looked the middle-aged man up and down. Jacob Ransom was decently built, but he probably hadn’t taken down a target from anywhere but the back of a jeep in more than a decade. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Ransom sputtered. “All due respect, Toast--”

 _Oh,_ now _he wants to talk about respect._ “Here’s what’s gonna happen, Jake,” said Reno. He finished loading the pistol, chambered it, and held it out to Ransom. “You and me are gonna trade, and then you’re getting these people the hell out of here.”

* * *

He didn’t like shotguns, really. They didn’t do what he wanted them to do, unless they were loaded with slugs, and even then it felt like trying to thread a needle with boat rigging. But occasionally they were just what the doctor ordered, like when he wanted to put several new holes in a dude’s face from point-blank range.

The rest of the Avalanche guys kept their distance after that one. They retreated to the upturned lobby furniture and picked at him from behind couches and fallen decorative pillars, bullets pinging against the panel truck’s side.

He pumped the action to eject the spent shell and chamber a new one. Ransom had been short on ammo, but so long as Reno used each shell judiciously, he wouldn’t have to resort to the less-powerful options smuggled in under his clothing. He took a peek around the rear fender and ducked down again amidst a spray of glass as a shot took out one of the brake lights.

“Shit,” Reno muttered under his breath, shaking bits of colored glass shards from his hair. There seemed a very real possibility these idiots would shoot out the gas tank if he stayed put much longer. He felt a rumble in his pocket and pulled his PHS out to see another notification from Freyra on the front screen. She and Ruluf had to be close. If he could just push Avalanche back away from the truck…

Reno did a quick inventory of his pockets. Knives, tools, type-1 grenades raided from the heliport armory, another pistol… And the ‘flashy’ grenade he’d nicked yesterday and hadn’t had an opportunity to use. Well, now seemed like the moment.

He rolled the shiny apple-sized grenade around in his hand. Its wire pull ring was misshapen, maybe bent from all the jostling around in pockets -- but he liked to think that it was one of the ones Rude made, maybe the first one before he got the hang of it. The whole thing had a clumsy look about it that tugged a smile from the corner of Reno’s mouth until he remembered where he was.

“Happy birthday to me,” Reno said, inaudible under the gunfire as he grasped the grenade firmly in his fist and yanked the pin free.

It hissed as it sailed through the air, landing square behind an upturned lobby table the Avalanche riflemen were using for cover. A plume of crackling hot-white light shot forth in all directions, flashing reds and purples as its Firaga residue popped and screeched. The gunmen scrambled, bolting from behind the table like scared cockroaches under the kitchen lights, one of them dashing to cover behind a mostly-intact pillar and the others retreating to the other side of the lobby’s shattered glass doors. Reno caught one in the back with Ransom’s shotgun, reloaded, and managed to get one more shot off before the holdout behind the pillar began returning fire.

“Hey! Watch it!” Reno yelled above the din of the stubborn gunman emptying his clip into the side of the panel truck. “You wanna send this whole place sky high?”

No answer, of course. The asshole just had to take cover behind a support structure, too -- even Reno wasn’t reckless enough to toss one of the type-1 grenades where it might bring the whole ceiling down on them. Today, anyway.

Instead, he waited for a gap in the firing and popped up, finger on the trigger. His shot clipped the holdout’s shoulder, enough for blood to paint the wall behind him and elicit a hell of a scream, but not enough for the guy to drop outright. Reno dropped back down, listening to the gunman’s gurgling and cursing as he fought with his rifle one-handed.

“Got your attention now?” he asked during the lull. “You put many more holes in this gas tank, the artifact’s getting blown up with the rest of us.”

Actually he wasn’t sure of that, something about the gas-to-oxygen ratio, but it sounded right. And the bullets could also damage the artifact itself. What Ancients-worshipping terrorist would wanna damage what was probably a holy relic to them or whatever?

There was a pregnant pause from the rifleman. Reno strained to listen, but he couldn’t hear much now over the crumbling of plaster and masonry and the occasional gunshot from the guy’s surviving teammates.

Reno chanced another look outside of cover. The sunlight from outside was illuminating the dust and debris hanging in the air, making it almost impossible to see anything from the outside, and not much better inside. Still, Reno couldn’t pick up movement. Maybe he’d shot something vital after all?

Steadying himself, Reno cocked the shotgun again and sprang out from behind the truck, bent low as he sprinted for the far pillar. A couple shots from outside pinged off the lobby marble near his boots, but nothing closer. Reaching the blasted-out corner with the upturned table, he swung the barrel sights around at the indistinct dark shape slumped against the bloodied wall.

It was significantly bloodier now. The gunman’s neck had been sliced open, exposing white cartilage and soft tissue, the head bent back as if on a hinge and the mouth agape and slack.

Next to him, Rude was wiping the blood off a length of piano wire.

“Ran into the old man,” he said by way of explanation. He bore an ugly-looking scrape on the side of his head; his black suit was chalky gray, mottled with plaster dust and other debris, but his glasses were comparatively pristine, meaning he had probably switched them out already. Overall, pretty intact for a guy who just got car-slammed into a wall.

Reno could have thrown a punch into his face, or maybe kissed him. It was really a 50:50 split.

But he didn’t have an opportunity to do either. In the next moment, Reno heard a hiss, and watched as a small, fuse-lit object soared through the air of the Regalia Resort lobby, landing with a final-sounding clunk beneath the rear axle of the panel truck.

“Motherfuc--”

This explosion was not like the Legend’s flashy homebrew grenade. It ripped through sound and space, a concussive force slamming into Reno’s side and hurling him and Rude both against the wall. Which didn’t hold up well either. 

* * *

All Reno could hear was ringing. All he could see was dust. It swept into his mouth and down the sides of his throat, found its way under his eyelids.

He lifted his head, coughing, streaks of tears cutting clean stripes down his dust-covered face. Chunks of plaster and fake marble shifted as he pushed himself into a sitting position, stirring up new clouds of grit and debris. 

Lucky for the building, that wasn’t an outer wall. Reno spat plaster dust from his lips and took a look around. Plush carpet, brass bannisters, racks of wine bottles that cost more than his annual salary. All the chairs still up on their cloth-covered tables. Apparently the Regalia Resort didn’t offer a lunch service.

“One day,” Reno announced in a scratched voice, “I’d like us to go somewhere and just have a normal meal.”

There was no response from beside him, not even a shifting trickle of dirt. Reno twisted under the rubble, trying to free his legs as well as clear some of the bigger chunks of cement off the pile next to him. He expected Rude to be roughly as buried as he was, but under the first layer he found nothing, not a hint of skin or a black suit.

“Rude?”

Reno got his fingers around the edge of a shield-sized slab of concrete, cuticles lined with blood where the nails were torn or split. He put his weight into it, back bent back sharply as a ragged grunt escaped between his teeth. Finally the slab began to budge.

Beneath it, he caught sight of a sleeve.

“Rude!”

Fire spread through Reno’s shoulders, reserves of strength he rarely called upon coursing through him as he pulled and lifted the debris off Rude’s body. When he had most of his upper half uncovered, Reno moved to his side and bent close, removing Rude’s broken sunglasses to wipe some of the dust off his face.

“Hey. Heyyy, partner,” Reno urged, panic rising in his throat at Rude’s closed eyes, the thick stream of blood half-dried over his brow, his unmoving mouth. His hand hovered near Rude's throat, not quite ready to check for a pulse...

Below him, Rude coughed.

Reno left out a nearly comically large exhale. “Okay, partner. Up you get…”

He cleared a little more rubble away from around Rude’s legs and knelt close to his side again, lifting Rude’s arm to wrap it securely around his shoulder. Standing up was a chore, especially with Reno’s own not-so-steady legs, but he had almost gotten Rude upright when he heard, through the dust, the familiar _pop-pop-pop_ of Avalanche rifles.

It was like a hammer swung against his breastbone. Reno’s legs crumpled beneath him, dropping straight down with Rude’s weight atop him.

“Reno!” Suddenly-alert gloved hands went to his shoulders, grappled to support him, ease his head down onto his partner’s lap. Rude bent over him, face stricken, naked terror in his eyes even through the fugue of his head injury. More emotion than Reno had ever seen out of him all at once.

_“He’s just trying to protect you” -- “I didn’t ask him to” -- “That’s love, I’m afraid.”_

“Never did have much of a poker face,” Reno said shakily, hand going to the buttons down the front of his dress.

Freyra was broader in the shoulders than him, and obviously carried around a lot more on her chest. This meant that even if the skirt length bordered on scandalous, the top part of the dress was loose enough for that fashionably baggy look, perfect for sticking something underneath.

Like a bulletproof vest.

Rude stared at the round little indentation in the plate over Reno’s chest. It was going to bruise like hell without materia treatment, and he might’ve cracked a rib somewhere again -- Reno wouldn’t be able to tell until the shock and adrenaline wore off -- but at least it was a marked improvement over yesterday.

“Was wondering why you looked a mess,” Rude admitted.

“Oh, hah hah,” Reno retorted. He stuck a hand down beneath the front of the plate, rubbing at his solar plexus with a wince. “Don’t let Freyra hear you say that. This is all her gear.”

“Even the vest?”

“What, the hot pink camo look? That’s totally Shinra standard issue.”

Rude glanced away, trying to hide a smirk. “You fought pretty good,” he said, by way of apology.

“Hah.” Shit, it hurt to laugh.

If Reno were in a bragging mood, he could take advantage of this sharing moment and tell Rude about the time he’d fought bare-ass naked against a slum lord’s henchmen and sewer pets. But today wasn’t the day for it. There might never be a day for it.

“I told Freyra that we fought a drug cartel in our socks,” Reno confessed instead, since it was bound to come up soon anyway.

Rude looked back, eyebrows arched high on his blood-caked forehead. Probably they should get that looked at soon. “Just our socks?” he asked, sounding concerned.

Reno didn’t get the chance to answer. Over their heads came the pop of gunfire again, not the Avalanche riflemen’s semi-auto bursts but the concatenated pistol reports that could only be Ruluf rolling up with both barrels ready. Their backup had arrived.

* * *

Clean-up and medical arrived soon after, courtesy of Shinra.

The doctor, her bun as severe as it was yesterday, took one look at the darkening bruise over Reno’s heart and cast him out of triage. His partner she demanded stay put, while she cleaned his head wound and determined if he would need materia and/or stitches. Rude gave Reno a forlorn look from across the medical tent as the doctor’s assistants shooed him outside.

Shinra medical had set up on the lawn outside the resort, which had definitely seen better days. A few screens and stretchers had been erected on the most-level part, and Reno went from one of these to the other, not looking for anyone in particular -- he thought, until he came around a corner and was ambushed by a creature more hat than woman.

“Oh, Ceci!” Tilly exclaimed, seated primly on a stretcher with one sleeve pushed up to her elbow, a nurse strapping a blood pressure cuff to her upper arm. “I’m so glad you were able to make it out today! Even if the circumstances are, er, less than ideal.” She turned back to the nurse, the sweep of her enormous taxidermied hat forcing him to duck. “Now, what is it you’re giving me again?”

“Just some potassium,” the overworked nurse said. Given all the perfectly ambulatory guests who were even now ambling around on the green and gawking at the wrecked hotel lobby from behind the police perimeter, he’d probably dealt with quite a few hypochondriacs in the last couple hours. “Can’t have you fainting again, Missus von Astur.”

Tilly beamed at Reno. “There, see? Nothing to worry about, my dear. Chin up!”

Reno clicked his teeth, unaware until that moment what expression he’d let show on his face. It wasn’t that he cared about these overfed parasites, he told himself, it was just… Tilly rubbed off on you. She was effusive and warm and overfamiliar and she had a bear hug that could crumple your spine. There was a bit of her that even reminded Reno of… well, it didn’t matter. Point was, she was safe, so that was one less thing hanging over his head.

“I was worried when our call dropped yesterday,” Tilly continued, bright and effervescent as ever. She patted the corner of the bed in an invitation for Reno to sit; the nurse shook his head at him discouragingly. “Jacob was _quite_ upset; I wasn’t sure if Nguyen had changed his mind about extending an invitation. And after I had lobbied so hard to have him invite you! Men can be so capricious, don’t you agree?”

The picture was slowly coming together for Reno, like mist receding to expose the landscape. Mathilda von Astur, dwarf chocobo fancier, had asked Nguyen to invite her dear chocobo fancier pen pal to one of his private auctions. It got the whole inner circle gossiping. A Shinra cousin, in that group? So when word spread that Tilly was also selling some of her collection, including a certified Ancient artifact, the rumors merged, and that was the story that Tseng would’ve heard after investigating the invitation.

Too bad that the artifact was in a billion pieces now, along with the rest of Tilly’s collection. And she was having money trouble, wasn’t that what Nguyen said?

“Will you be okay?” Reno blurted out, his mouth running faster than his brain just then. “After…?”

“Oh.” Tilly waved an ash-smudged glove. “We von Asturs are hardy folk. We’ll bounce back from this, I’m sure. Who knows,” she added with a bittersweet smile, “maybe oil will come back into fashion in a few years’ time.”

“I doubt it,” said Reno. He felt compelled to rep the home team, just a little.

“At least someone will make a profit from this whole kerfuffle,” Tilly sighed. “I’m told Giorno is simply _raking_ in the insurance money after that business down at the docks yesterday.”

Well that was… maybe good? Reno _had_ noticed a distinct lack of Ladresco today, but he’d chalked it up to a small mercy from whatever deity dispensed such things. Knowing he’d helped line the pockets of a grave-robbing huckster didn’t feel great.

“Ah,” Tilly said, her watery blue eyes brightening as she spotted something behind Reno. “It looks like someone’s here to collect you.”

Reno looked over his shoulder, and was not surprised to see Rude heading across the lawn in his direction, a square of gauze taped on the side of his shiny smooth head.

“I should get back,” Reno said to Tilly. He was surprised at the deference in his own tone, like he really wanted to leave open the possibility of staying longer. This woman he wasn’t going to see or even think about again. “Listen. I’m not…”

What if he told her? What harm would it do? She could have the real Ceci back; rest easy in the knowledge that all of this was the fault of an energy company she already despised anyway.

Tilly smiled again, soft and almost pitying, the same look she’d given him on the yacht.

“Go on, dear,” she said. “Thank you for livening things up a little.”

* * *

“A complete failure,” Veld said. “This mission is an embarrassment for the department.”

Reno and Rude said nothing. Veld rarely raised his voice, and he didn’t do so now either, every word of disappointment landing like hail on their hunched backs. Reno wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive this meeting at all if they were having it in person.

“It appears that Avalanche never considered Ladresco a high-priority target,” Tseng added, because apparently salting wounds was part of his job description. “They attacked his warehouses in order to draw us out, rather than the other way around. When they noticed attention shifting to von Astur, they simply followed suit.”

In short, Avalanche had outsmarted them. Ruluf and Freyra had led their forces right to Tilly’s estate, allowing Avalanche to hijack the truck and have that whole freeway chase Reno missed out on. Not a great look.

“The one question is why Avalanche would then destroy the artifact themselves,” Tseng continued. “It no doubt would’ve benefited their organization considerably, and they had no reason to believe they couldn’t still secure it.”

“Somebody panicked, is my guess,” Reno spoke up.

“We have your report,” Veld answered coldly, and Reno felt like shrinking into a ball and hiding under the kitchen sink. “Whatever the case, the one silver lining to this outcome is that Avalanche did not come away with the artifact either. I will... emphasize that during my meeting with the president.”

That was something to hold out hope for, then. If Veld went to bat for an agent, things usually worked out. Eventually.

“In the meantime,” Veld went on, “Ruluf and Freyra will return to Midgar.”

“Yes, sir,” intoned the rookies.

Freyra was sitting up on the edge of the villa’s kitchen counter, kicking her boots. She’d been livid at seeing the state of her dress when she finally caught up to Reno, but after that she’d grown pretty well resigned to the whole thing, even suggesting with a giggle that she could take him shopping in Mideel sometime. Or maybe she had meant that as a threat.

“Reno and Rude,” said Veld. “For your mishandling of this mission, and the poor judgment with which you directed the agents in your care, I am suspending you both with pay for two weeks.”

Reno shot upright, unfolding his arms. “Aw, come on--!”

“Perhaps you would like to spend that time on house arrest in del Sol,” Veld added lightly, “in a manner similar to that of our deactivated colleague. Who, I’m certain, none of you would ever be so foolish as to make unauthorized contact with.”

Reno shot his eyes toward the far side of the kitchen nearest the delivery elevator, where the Legend was stretched out on a ledge like an overgrown ginger tom, scratching guiltily at his cheek.

“Yes, sir,” Rude said beside Reno, and that was that.

* * *

Freyra and Ruluf fled the kitchen after the call, heading downstairs to begin packing up their gear. That left just Rude, Reno, and the Legend, who finally rolled off his ledge and doffed his fedora, holding it penitently in front of him as he slouched over to them.

“Guess I made things worse for you guys,” he said, with a thin grin. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Rude. “You helped us when we needed it.”

“If it’s any consolation, it ain’t _really_ a punishment. Think about it. No one knows if that artifact woulda done the company any good in the first place, or Avalanche for that matter.”

“Yeah,” Reno said dully, “thanks.”

“No, hey, listen,” said the Legend. “You think if Veld was actually mad he’d punish you with a free vacation?”

“It’s a suspension,” Rude reminded him.

“Paid suspension!”

“With house arrest.”

“You’ve seen how hard they enforce that kinda thing around here.”

That was... a surprisingly solid argument. And if anyone would have insight into Veld’s mindset here, it was the veteran. Rude and Reno exchanged a glance.

“Two weeks,” Rude said, brow lifting.

“That’s like twice as long as I was ‘sposed to be gone in the first place,” Reno agreed, considering. They could hit up a lot of bars and clubs in two weeks. A lot of takoyaki stands on the beach. And no two-drink maximum anymore, now that their stupid bet was behind them. “Think we get to keep the villa?”

“Chief didn’t say otherwise…”

Reno’s eyes flashed. “In that case…” They had a lot of beds to start breaking in, starting with that massive king-size one Rude had been keeping him out of all week.

“Now you’re getting it,” the Legend said, with a real grin this time. “Should I leave you two alone?”

Rude cleared his throat, tearing his gaze away. Reno gave the elder Turk a dirty look, which only made the Legend’s guffaw heartier.

“All right, all right,” the elder Turk said, thoroughly enjoying himself now. “I don’t wanna call the big boss’s wrath down on you for real, so I oughta split anyway. Before I go, though -- you finally ready to hear a bit more sage wisdom from senpai?”

Reno scrunched up his nose. “They got you saying that now too?”

The Legend shrugged. “War’s over, don’t see why not. Wish we'd had that kinda spirit going on in my day. You got a pretty good group with this cohort.”

“They’re okay,” Reno begrudged, which earned him another chuckle from the older man. “Fine, if it’ll get you out of our hair, what’s this so-called wisdom?”

“Heh. You were a lot cuter as a rookie. Does he lighten up when you two are alone?” the Legend asked Rude, who wisely gave no reply. “All right, forget it. Here it is. You know how cats have nine lives?”

Reno didn’t get along with cats, as a general rule. They repelled each other, like magnets with the same polarity. “I guess?” he hazarded.

“So do the best Turks,” said the Legend. “Make sure you don’t spend ‘em all in one place.”

* * *

They watched him depart from the front steps, heading off into golden late-afternoon sunlight. And then it was just the two of them.

“We should talk,” Rude said.

Reno cringed. He’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. “Guess so.”

He hopped up on the kitchen island which had recently served as a breakfast table and bomb-making workbench, kicking his legs as Freyra had done and fiddling with the buttons down the front of his shirt. They’d raided the (mostly intact) Regalia gift shop before they’d shipped out and Reno now sat wearing a tacky floral-print Wutaian shirt and electric blue swim trunks. Little bits of plaster dust still hung in his hair.

“So, first of all,” he said, deciding to rip this bandage off before Rude could get started, “I don’t really do the whole dating thing.”

“I’m all right with that,” said Rude, and maybe he even believed it himself, despite all the tells in his expression. “But I meant the mission.”

“Oh,” said Reno. “Uh, right. Sure.”

“Mostly I want to apologize.”

Reno fidgeted. “What? Hey, you were just following orders, it’s no big deal.”

“It is,” Rude insisted. “You were right: I was keeping you out of things you shoulda had a say in. I lost sight of how tough you really are.”

More fidgeting. “Yeah, well, maybe you were right too.” Nine lives, the Legend had told them. How many had he used up just in the past 24 hours? “Coulda saved us both a lot of grief if I’d thought of the vest thing sooner, for one thing.”

“Wouldn’t fit under most of your outfits,” Rude said, with a smirk.

“Shoulda told Andrea I needed something that could win a drag ball _and_ stop a bullet. Or six.” Reno’s own grin faltered. He cleared his throat, averting his gaze. “Look, I’m… I’m sorry too. For being a dumbass. Nobody wants a partner they gotta bail out all the time. It’s just…”

He trailed off, unsure of what excuse he was even trying to make. The words were there, he just couldn’t find them. Like groping for a light in a pitch-black room.

Rude, frowning, came over closer to him. They were almost eye-level like this, and Reno fought a compulsion to look away, heat rising to his cheeks even before Rude placed a hand on his knee.

“Hey,” said his partner. “I’ll always bail you out.”

“I--” Reno squirmed, heart racing painfully against his bruised breastbone. This was too much all at once, he couldn’t just-- “You shouldn’t have to.”

“That’s what partners are for.”

“No, I mean--”

“You mean the ‘all the time’ part. I know.”

“I’m not gonna sit around being dead weight,” Reno said fiercely.

“You’re ranked third in the department. That isn’t dead weight for anybody.” Rude touched his chin, drawing his gaze back when Reno tried to look away. “If you got in over your head this time it’s only because I kept shutting you out. I fucked up. Not you.”

“I do go off half-cocked though. I ran after Freyra when you told me not to. I got caught out and had to get rescued from my own fucking rescue attempt, in a shootout that wouldn’t’a happened in the first place if I hadn’t messed up the intel.”

“So do better,” Rude said. “That’s all anybody’s asking. We just weren’t synced this time.”

Reno felt a curious pang of relief. _‘Weren’t synced’_ was a good way to phrase it. Neutral. No implied blame. No suggestion of feels neither of them wanted to admit having caught. 

“Heh.” He laughed once under his breath, looking down at his hands. “So, just gotta work on our coordination, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Y’know, a wise lady once told me the key to a good partnership is trust and communication.”

“Yeah?” Rude picked some clumps of plaster dust from Reno’s hair.

“Y-yeah,” Reno said, his cheeks suddenly burning again. “So I mean… If I’m goin’ out there half-cocked, it’s only ‘cause I know you got my back. I trust you, man.”

Rude smiled. He crooked a finger around Reno’s chin, lifting his head again to press a warm, easy kiss against his lips.

Within seconds, Reno had grabbed two fistfuls of Rude’s shirt, pushing their mouths together hungrily as he drove his tongue in deep. His heart banged in his ears; even though it wasn’t the first time, even though Rude had given every indication he intended to stick around, there was something terrifying and thrilling about doing this with Rude, _being_ this with Rude, whatever label they decided to put on it.

_(“What’s happening? I can’t see.”_

_“Stop pushing!”)_

“Rude,” Reno said, breathless, finally breaking the kiss but only long enough to breathe. Then he was peppering Rude’s face with kisses, hands venturing everywhere, trying to touch everything. His thighs were shaking, the building heat between his legs turning unbearable as he squirmed and slid more of his weight into his partner’s arms. “Rude, Rude…”

_(“Ow!”_

_“Shut up. They’re gonna hear us.”_

_“Move your elbow!”)_

He wasn’t seated on the kitchen island now so much as propped up against it, supported in Rude’s hands as he wrapped koala-like around his partner, arms locked tight around his shoulders. Rude’s fingers dug hard into the flesh of his ass and Reno gasped, tossing his head back, which Rude immediately took advantage of by latching his mouth onto a tender line of his throat.

“Aah, Rude--!”

_(“Whoa!”)_

A thunderous crash split the air, sending Reno jumping within his partner’s embrace. They tore away from each other, twisting around in time to see the kitchen door burst inward and three black-suited figures tumble out.

“The fuck?” Reno yelled at the heap of Turks, reserving the greatest share of his fury toward the Legend, whom he jabbed a finger at. “We just saw you leave!”

“Got curious,” the Legend confessed from the floor.

“Hey, Freyra? What happened?” asked the tinny compressed voice of Alvis, the redhead who absolutely did not look anything like Reno. It was coming from Freyra’s PHS, which had spun across the tile and stopped near Rude’s feet. “We just lost the picture.”

‘We’? The whole bullpen was listening?

“Freyra, you little shit!” Reno disentangled himself from Rude and got to his feet, right as the junior agent was scrambling for the door. “Stay right here! I’m gonna skin all three of you!”

Rude, too busy dying of embarrassment to hold him back, stood by as Reno chased all three of their colleagues from the villa, roaring every creative curse and threat at his disposal. 

* * *

As soon as the rookies were cleared out and the Legend was sent packing (for real), Rude and Reno got down to business making up for the two and a half years they’d spent not having sex with each other. First item: a bath.

“Shit, if I’d known you had this in your bathroom, I’d’a fought a lot harder to stay,” said Reno, stretching his legs out. The tub was so wide and so deep it practically counted as a pool, more like a communal bath than something that belonged in a private home. Rude and he could sit at opposite ends and not even brush each other’s toes, but where would the fun in that be? Reno wiggled, situating himself more comfortably against his partner’s wet chest. “Can’t believe you were keeping this to yourself all week.”

“Never used it. Just stuck with the shower,” said Rude. His hands wandered freely, touching Reno wherever it interested him, which was pretty much everywhere. “Nice to have the time for it finally.”

“Two weeks in a Shinra family vacation home. We oughta fail missions more often.” Reno sighed, relaxing back against Rude and parting his legs a little further to allow Rude’s exploring fingers. “Y’know… earlier… When the truck blew and we got knocked through that wall…”

“Pretty sure that wall was already coming down.”

“Whatever. I just. There was a second there where I.” Reno squirmed again, although this time it was because Rude’s fingers had found a good spot. “I-I’m just saying, sometimes you gotta let me do the rescuing too.”

He’d spent so much time having a complex about Rude protecting him, it had never really occurred to him how much he worried over Rude in return. That moment back there, where he wasn’t sure if his partner was still breathing… Reno didn’t ever want to experience that again.

Rude pressed a kiss to the nape of Reno’s neck, nosing the damp curls of hair. “I could live with that,” he said.

Reno smiled.

“So!” he said. “What’re the chances we can still set up that threesome with the old ma-- ow!”

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! You can find me on Twitter @robotdere.


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